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POLL: Which do you, as a taxpayer, prefer?

A) Spending in excess of $50 million federal taxpayer dollars ANNUALLY to study Asian carp in the hope of developing a way to control and, ultimately, eradicate them from the nation’s rivers before they invade the Great Lakes; or

B) Spending up to $9.5 billion to erect barriers between the infested waters of the Mississippi wastershed and the Great Lakes now; or

C) Using free market techniques to get rid of the fish.

Before you answer my poll question, you may well need answers to a few questions of your own. First and foremost, what are Asian carp and why do they pose a problem? Asian carp are a fish indigenous to — you guessed it — Asia. These fish grow quickly and, in the process, often consume 20 to as much as 40 percent of their body weight PER DAY. They can grow to weigh up to 110 pounds and extend four feet in length.

In the 1980s, Asian carp were imported into the southern U.S. to keep aquaculture facilities clean and to provide fresh fish for fish markets. But, unfortunately, they’ve escaped into the Mississippi River. They have been heading steadily north over the last 30 years and — cue the JAWS music — they are currently poised to enter the Great Lakes.

Why should we care? Because they require such a large amount of food, Asian carp tend to be invasive, displacing native fish species by consuming more than their fair share of the food resources in a given area. In parts of the Mississippi and Illinois River systems, for example, the Asian carp now comprise more than 95% of the biomass. This presents a problem for commercial fisheries because the carp are less valuable commercially than the native fish they’ve replaced.

But that’s not all!

“In addition to causing ecological harm, the silver variety of the Asian carp has caused direct harm to people. The silver carp is skittish and easily startled by the sound of a boat motor. The sound causes the fish to leap as high as ten feet out of the water, earning them the nickname ‘the flying fish.’ Some of these fish weigh more than twenty pounds. They land in boats, damage property, and injure people. Boaters are routinely injured and one woman was almost killed near Peoria. Said one biologist working on the waterway: ‘You may imagine it would be quite novel for a 20-pound fish to jump into your boat, but being hit by a large Asian carp would be similar to being hit by a bowling ball. Even if the fish don’t hit you, they can break fishing rods, windshields, electronics or anything else in your boat. As if adding insult, the carp will leave slime, blood and excrement on everything it touches.’”

Okay? Convinced the Asian carp invasion is a thing to dread and fear? Me too. So, what does $50 million annually or a one-time expenditure of up to $9.5 billion buy in the way of a government solution to the problem? Short answer? Not much.

According to John Goss, the Asian Carp Program Director for the White House Council on Environmental Quality — I’ll just call him the White House’s “Carp Czar” (not to be confused with its “Crappie Czar,” which I’m sure Obama must have tucked away in the bowels of the White House somewhere <ahem>), the $50 million will be spent to:

• conduct first-time water sampling to determine whether the destructive fish have established a foothold in the lakes;
•  step-up trapping and netting in rivers that could provide access to the lakes; and
•  conduct initial field tests of scents that could lure carp to where they could be captured and an acoustic water gun that could scare carp from crucial locations.

Meanwhile, the Army Corps of Engineers is conducting a study, scheduled for completion sometime in 2015, which may recommend the construction of those $9.5 billion barriers between the river systems and the Great Lakes, a “solution” that is projected to take 20 YEARS to complete. (Interestingly, the initial articles that provided the source material for this post did not include an estimate of the cost to erect the proposed barriers.  I had to dig pretty hard for that information. But, of course, how much it costs is not really important. After all, our nation’s new motto is “Billions for defense against Asian carp, not one cent for tax relief,” isn’t it?)

Five states are now suing the Army Corps of Engineers in federal court in Illinois to obtain a court order requiring the Corps to expedite its five-year study and install those pricey barriers. They’ve even asked the U.S. Supreme Court to order the Corps to erect the barriers now and/or close the locks between the Mississippi watershed and Lake Michigan until the barriers are in place, arguing that the threat of carp invasion is too imminent to wait until the matter can be tried in the Illinois court.  The five states are opposed by several parties, including a business group that argues closing the locks for any length of time sufficient to let this litigation be concluded and/or a “fix” implemented would sink the commercial and recreational businesses that depend on the ability to move freely through them. On February 27, 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to get involved.

As our ponderous federal bureaucracy begins to generate its flood of paperwork and pencil-pushing, and while at least five states already affected by the carp or now poised to be invaded by them expend their resources looking for a federal handout rather than taking remedial action of their own, real people are contemplating — and implementing — some pretty awesome ideas to stem the fishy tide, albeit (unfortunately, IMHO) not without some government involvement.

• An entrepreneur in Havana, Illinois, has perfected a way to process Asian carp to extract the wealth of Omega 3 fatty acid they contain, an oil that is believed to reduce the risk of coronary heart disease and to have anti-cancer effects;
• A fish processor located in a former chicken processing plant in Pearl, Illinois, about 70 miles north of St. Louis, Missouri, has netted a contract to export “Upper Mississippi wild-caught carp” with “so much energy, they jump” to upscale restaurants in China;
• And there’s a movement afoot to rename Asian carp and develop recipes for its preparation so the fish can be marketed for public consumption in the United States, an effort necessary because the “carp” label conjures up images of the American carp which, unlike the Asian varieties, is a bottom-feeder that is not very tasty.
• And, my personal favorite, a group of enterprising young men from Peoria have developed a business taking tourists out on the Illinois River to “fish” for Asian carp using bows and arrows. They call themselves “The Peoria Carp-Hunters.”To promote their business, they’ve filmed some hilarious outings where they’ve . . .Words fail me. You’ll have to see this to believe it:

Asian Carp as Jaws via Activist Angler

Size of an Asian Carp compared to a man via Upmag.net

Asian Carp Czar article via MoldyChum