Asian Carp DNA Found in Lake Michigan; Supreme Court Rejects Remedy; SIGN THE PETITION TO STOP IT!

Water samples taken in Lake Michigan reveal that Asian carp have made the jump into the world's largest freshwater system, the Journal Sentinel has learned.

Earlier Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to force the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to slam shut two lakeside navigation locks to prevent the super-sized, north-migrating carp from making the jump into the lake.

The court issued its announcement Tuesday with no explanation.

But, we're not giving up the fight!  Sign the Petition today to put pressure on government and make them close the locks!

[excerpted from the Journal-Sentinel]

Now the Army Corps is poised to announce that two "environmental" DNA samples show the presence of leaping silver carp above the O'Brien lock south of downtown Chicago.

One of those samples, taken Dec. 8, reveals the presence of DNA in Lake Michigan.

The Army Corps is scheduled to make an announcement at 1:30 Tuesday afternoon.

The court, meanwhile, has denied a request for a preliminary injunction to shut a lock at Navy Pier and O'Brien lock, the lock that the carp have apparently already bypassed.

While no actual fish have been found above the barrier, biologists say the presence of DNA in lake waters is essentially as good as finding a fish.

The technology can detect even the tiniest trace of fish DNA, and scientists say it indicates a fish has been in the area within the past two days.

The material likely comes from a carp's digestive tract, and while there are other possible explanations for the material to be found in a body of water - contaminated ballast discharges from a barge, for example - the scientists behind the technology say that is highly unlikely.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency dispatched a team to the laboratories at the University of Notre Dame where the DNA tests are being conducted, and concluded that the tests are a reliable means of detecting presence of a fish.

What the tests do not reveal, however, are how many fish may be in an area, or the size or age of the fish.

The news did not come as a surprise to Phil Moy, a University of Wisconsin Sea Grant biologist who has co-chaired the panel that helped the Army Corps construct an electric fish barrier on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal about 20 miles downstream from Lake Michigan.

"The fish have probably been up there around the locks for a year," Moy said.

The reason: the Army Corps turned off the power to the barrier system in October of 2008 for about a week's worth of maintenance, and Moy said the fish likely slipped through at that time.

The barrier that was turned off at that time was the first one to operate in the canal, and was not built to operate at level strong enough to repel juvenile fish, which need a bigger jolt.

A second, stronger barrier was subsequently turned on in April 2009, but it was not turned up to a level strong enough to deter small fish until last August.

Case not over
 

The Supreme Court, meanwhile, did not rule on a separate request from the State of Michigan to re-open an ongoing case over the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, which is a provides an artificial link between the Mississippi River basin and Lake Michigan.

"They just denied the motion for preliminary injunction to shut the locks, they're completely silent on the petition to re-open the case," said Noah Hall, a Wayne State University law professor who has followed the case closely.

In that portion of the case, the State of Michigan, backed by Wisconsin, New York, Ohio and Minnesota, is hoping the court will re-open a decades-old lawsuit over the operation of the Chicago canal.

Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox said he was disappointed the court decided not to push the "pause button on this crisis" by closing the locks on an emergency basis, but he said briefs in the petition to re-open the case are due Feb. 19.

The canal, which opened in 1900, was built to flush Chicago sewage toward the Gulf of Mexico.

It worked wonders for Chicago sanitation, but it also permanently lowered Lake Michigan and upset Illinois' downstream neighbors.

The case dragged on for years, but in 1967 the court ruled the diversion of Lake Michigan water could continue, provided it was capped at about 2.1 billion gallons a day.

The court, however, left the door open for future action if the neighboring states could demonstrate that the canal was causing them harm.

Cox, who is running for governor, hopes the carp invasion will fit that bill, and he is asking the court to force Illinois and the Army Corps to re-engineer the canal system to once again separate Lake Michigan from the Mississippi.

Biologists: Fish may not breed

Biologists have said all is not lost if a small population of fish make it into Lake Michigan, because it can be very difficult for a breeding population to get established.

"If a few fish get into the Great Lakes, it's not game over," Duane Chapman, a U.S. Geological Survey researcher who has made a career out of studying the fish on the heavily infested Missouri River, said last month.

The fish can grow to 50 pounds and consume up to 20% of their weight in plankton per day - food upon which every other species in a water system either directly or indirectly depends.

Chapman said they do indeed pose a dire threat to fishing and recreational boating on the world's largest freshwater system.

But he said what matters now is how many get into the lake. That will determine whether a breeding population gets established.

For invasion biologists, numbers are everything. First, the invading fish have to find each other. Then they have to find a place to spawn. Asian carp probably won't be able to breed in open lake waters. Research shows that fertilized Asian carp eggs require long free-flowing rivers; without a current to keep them afloat, they sink to the bottom and die. Surveys have shown there are 22 tributaries on the U.S. side of the Great Lakes that may provide suitable spawning habitat. More such rivers flow into the lakes from Canada.

"The number of fish that get in is everything - it will control whether these fish have a chance of putting together a population or not," Chapman said.

The worry is what the carp will do to Lake Michigan's $7 billion commercial and recreational fishery, as well as the recreational boating industry.

The two Asian carp species now threatening the Great Lakes were first imported to the United States by an Arkansas fish farmer in the early 1970s. He wasn't interested in the fish and turned them over to Arkansas fishery officials, and they in turn used them in sewage treatment experiments funded in part by an $81,000 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, according to a 2006 Journal Sentinel investigation.