Tuesday, November 24, 2009

A call to close the gates of the Chicago River.

One of the only remaining options to save the great lakes from an onslaught of Asian Carp may be to temporarily close the locks that link the Chicago River to the Chicago Harbor at Navy Pier.


An excerpt from the article.

"The Asian carp appears to be not only on the doorstep of the Great Lakes, it's managed to push the door ajar and is trying to wriggle through. But before we get used to adding a carp menu to Friday fish fries, there are still some things authorities can do to prevent a full-scale invasion.

One key step would be to temporarily close the gateways and locks in Illinois that lead from Lake Michigan to the waterways that have already been invaded by the carp, as a coalition of environmental groups urged last week. Then monitor the waterways to determine just how far the large jumping fish has come, and poison those stretches where necessary to eradicate the fish"

It's going to be a long fight boys and girls, we had better hunker down and put on the boxing gloves for this one.

-Great Lakes Angler

3 comments:

  1. Hey CAM, is there anyone we can call or e-mail to get this done?

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  2. Your question is good, I'll look into it. I had the same thoughts last night as I read this. If I find out anything I'll post it here straight away. Thanks for asking.

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  3. For the past 10 years the Chicago Park District has stock the Lagoons with Catfish that came from fish farms that used Asian Big head Carp in there tanks. One can only speculate how many Asian Bighead Carp were accidentally stocked in our lagoons in the last ten years.

    Now the greatest concern is two lagoons (Lincoln park zoo south Pond & Jackson Park that had direct access to Lake Michigan. Lincoln Park Lagoon had a Fish Kill, I believe that Jackson Park lagoon maybe next.

    Now I previously tried to bring all of this on several online Fishing communities in Chicago, but unfortunately my actions were perceived as just spamming & many just plain ignored my postings. One website deleted my posting stating that "this was there house". I know for a fact one of the online-monitors of that site works for CPD.

    I've even contacted bob "The Fishin' guy" from CPD & he gave me a well rehearsed statement that "the Asian Bighead carp in the Lagoons don't pose a great threat in the lagoon because the fact that they need fast current to spawn/reproduce". Which I feel is absolutely BS! Even though the Lincoln Park south pond was not connected to the lake like Jackson park is, it still had a drain pipe that went directly to the Lincoln park lagoon next to LSD.

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