The silvery Asian carp splashed like children in a swimming pool, leaping and frolicking, exploding out of the murky water of the Illinois River. It wasn’t difficult to imagine them as circus performers, putting on a show.
Watching a couple of foot-long fish crack the surface and hurl their bodies skyward is a rare, mesmerizing sight. It’s just not a particularly welcome one after the implications of their presence are explained.
“The numbers are just phenomenal,” Kevin Irons said as he maneuvered a pontoon boat recently. “They are flying. They move around a lot. In their native areas they travel 500 miles in a season.”
Irons is a biologist for the Illinois Natural History Survey, which is monitoring the proliferation of the fish that could pose a big problem someday in Lake Michigan.
We have been hearing about the invasion of Asian carp in Illinois for a few years now. The fear is that the two varieties, bighead and silver carp, will swim north and break through to Lake Michigan. Once in the lake, the carp could become the dominant fish, beating salmon, bass and other fish to all the food they all like to eat.
What has not been obvious to those of us who do not study carp for a living is just how many of them are massing in the river. We’re not just talking about a few breakaway carp that escaped from Arkansas a few years ago. While watching the men at work based at the natural history survey’s Havana biological station on this day, there seemed to be a million carp cavorting.
“We caught a 40-pounder with 2 million eggs,” Irons said.
A group of survey boats motored close to the Starved Rock Dam, where the carp gather, and survey workers employed an electro-shocking device to drive the fish to the surface. Some were netted while floating and then examined as part of ongoing monitoring. Biologist Mike McClelland netted a bighead carp estimated to weigh 15 to 20 pounds. It was a decent armful.
“They get a lot bigger than that,” said Mike Conlin, Illinois Department of Natural Resources’ director of resource conservation. “A hundred pounds.”
The truly astounding thing about the carp is how high they can get out of the water. Electro-shocking brings the fish up on request for the scientists. The fish, however, do as they please the rest of the time.
It is one thing to be a boater on the lookout for carp splashing around in tight groups. It is quite another to be skimming along the river at 20 m.p.h. and have a big fish clobber you while you are steering. The fish may be moving as fast as the boat, pick up momentum and slam into a boater with a leap. Carp jump more as the temperature gets hotter, meaning we are into the prime-time season now.
“All summer,” Conlin said. “They’ll be jumping till it cools down in the fall.”
Carp have injured boaters. In Missouri, when state officials first faced a flying carp problem, garbage can lids were issued to biologists as shields.
“It’s dangerous,” Conlin said. “You can get hurt. I’m talking about Ski-Doers and water-skiers. It’s not going to be just one time as they’re going along. It’s going to be dozens of times at a higher speed.”
Scientists who court carp take the biggest risks. They are out on the Illinois River more frequently while trying to attract the fish and can be blindsided by the carp just as easily as outdoors enthusiasts.
“They go 10 feet up in the air and 20 feet laterally,” biologist Matt O’Hare said. “It’s incredible.”
Fish jump into their boats regularly–that morning included. Biologists also have seen a fish take off from the rear of their 18-foot boat, hurdle a canopy and land in the water at the front of the boat. McClelland came within an inch of being harmed seriously last year. He was driving a survey boat when a carp went airborne and hit him in the face.
“I just happened to see it out of the corner of my eye,” McClelland said. “I turned and it clipped me. It scraped my chin. It was a little fish. What if it had been a 10-pounder? It could have been worse. If it had been a big fish, I would have been done for.”
It is too soon for the survey guys to conclude any species of Illinois River fish has been overwhelmed, but Irons said over the last five years bass numbers are down in the river south of Peoria. The time period coincides with awareness of Asian carp.
No one knows with certainty if carp are conquering the whole river and pushing other fish out, but the study continues. Biologists just must follow the elemental rule of boxing–protect yourself at all times.
———-
lfreedman@tribune.com
