MUSKEGON — There may be bigger fish to fry than Asian carp when it comes to invasive species — but that doesn't mean the carp risk can be ignored.
That was the view of many at a Muskegon town-hall meeting Friday on fighting the spread of Asian carp, a catchall term for several non-native species.
Bighead, silver, grass and black carp have spread through much of the Mississippi and Illinois rivers, some reaching waters not far from Lake Michigan in the Chicago area. Others are in Indiana's Wabash River, possibly threatening the Maumee River and Lake Erie.
The fast-growing, fast-breeding carp are considered a serious risk to the Great Lakes should they invade in a big way, imperiling the $7 billion fishing industry because they are voracious eaters of plankton critical to native fish.
Silver carp also pose a risk to boats and boaters because the big fish — which can reach 100 lbs. — leap great distances from motor-roiled waters, sometimes damaging equipment and injuring people.
Asian carp were imported in the 1970s to eat algae in Southern “fish farm” ponds. They escaped into the Mississippi-Illinois basin during floods in the 1990s.
Approximately 40 people attended the informational and public-comment meeting at Grand Valley State University's Annis Water Resources Institute. The meeting was part of a statewide series hosted by the state House Natural Resources, Tourism and Outdoor Recreation Committee, with Muskegon's meeting hosted by Rep. Holly Hughes, R-White River Township.
Presentations by experts from the Michigan Sea Grant program, Michigan State University Extension and the Department of Natural Resources mixed with public comments and even an electronic instant opinion poll.
Friday's meeting included information about the carp, their potential danger to the Great Lakes and Michigan's tributary rivers, the prospect of their spreading there, and possible ways of spotting, preventing and dealing with such a spread.
A number of themes emerged from the two-hour town meeting.
• The invasive species threat is bigger than carp.
“This is just one invasive that we're involved in right now,” fisheries biologist Tom Hamilton said. “The carp is just one more challenge, with a hundred more aimed at us.”
The Great Lakes already has some 185 non-native species, none of which gets nearly the media or political attention Asian carp does. Many experts believe the biggest threat to the Great Lakes ecosystem is posed by the nutrient-gulping quagga mussel, an invader now nearly a quadrillion strong coating the bottom of Lake Michigan.
Some attendees were concerned that the public fixation on Asian carp is even, in the words of one, a “red herring”: a political distraction from more urgent dangers such as the quagga, toxic waste dumps and polluted runoff.
But others, while granting the greater urgency of the other threats, said they were no reason to ignore the Asian carp danger.
• No one's sure how great that danger is.
“The effects of invasive species are inherently unpredictable,” said Dan O'Keefe of the Michigan Sea Grant program.
He noted that the impact of zebra mussels on Great Lakes fisheries was at first overestimated in the 1990s — but that quagga mussels have proved worse than expected, thriving in lakes Michigan and Huron when early predictions were that they wouldn't survive there.
Similarly, reliable predictions about the large-scale spread of Asian carp into Lake Michigan and beyond are impossible.
It's unclear if the carp can ever sustain a breeding population in the Big Lake. Some scientists consider it unlikely due to the lake's cold temperature and, ironically, the plankton holocaust already caused by the quagga mussel.
But the carp's breeding prospects may be better if enough of them somehow make it to warmer Michigan rivers, especially the Grand and the St. Joseph. Those rivers have more than 60 miles of free-flowing water, which most scientists think Asian carp need in order to spawn — although even that isn't universally accepted.
• There's no secret weapon.
“It's a mistake to think that any one thing is going to be the magic bullet,” O'Keefe said.
If the carp get here in strength, options are limited.
Poisoning is a last-resort measure that destroys other fish and aquatic life. Netting does some good when there's already a large population, otherwise not so much. Harvesting the netted carp for sale as human or pet food helps — a little; the market's not big enough to make it a complete solution.
One partial solution got a bigger vote from the Muskegon crowd than at other town-hall stops: stocking native fish that can eat or compete with Asian carp, such as muskies, bass and walleye. But, according to the DNR's Dave Clapp, “fish biologists wouldn't agree that's the top option.”
And the bigger-picture, preventive solutions discussed so far have an uncertain outlook.
An electric barrier in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal hasn't been completely effective. Even closing the shipping locks between Chicago and Lake Michigan might not totally seal off the route into Lake Michigan, experts say, and anyhow it's being fought successfully by Chicago and shipping interests.
The potential big fix would be the permanent physical separation of the Mississippi River basin from Lake Michigan. But that would take years once begun, and the agency that would head it — the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — has made it the subject of a study that will take until 2015. Some fear that will be too late.
The slowness of that study has been heavily criticized by environmentalists and others. A coalition of Great Lakes cities and states has launched its own fast-track study and hopes to have separation options ready by early next year.
The Michigan Legislature is also pushing for faster work by the Corps. “We need to make sure that the study is sped up,” Hughes said.
• Good science is essential.
One sentiment won endorsement from just about everyone who spoke Friday.
“Decisions must be based on sound science, not on rhetoric, not on emotion,” said Alan Steinman, director of the Annis Institute.
Public policy on Asian carp and other environmental issues must be based on peer-reviewed science, Steinman said.
As an example of that, he cited research-based bans on phosphate detergents and hydrofluorocarbons.
As an example of the opposite, he cited his experience in Florida before moving to Michigan, where environmental decisions about the Everglades were made based on politics and proved to be ineffective, he said.