LAKE MICHIGAN—A Lake Michigan commercial fisherman made an unsettling discovery in his gill net last week when he pulled a silver carp, of the invasive Asian carp family, from the waters not far from Chicago.
The Asian Carp Regional Coordinating Committee (ACRCC) in the United States announced that the male fish had been discovered on June 22 in the Illinois Waterway below the TJ O’Brien Lock and Dam—nine miles from Lake Michigan and past the electric barrier.
According to the ACRCC, the silver carp, measuring 28 inches and weighing approximately eight pounds, was captured by gill net by a contracted commercial fisherman as part of the committee’s Monitoring Response Work Group’s seasonal intensive monitoring.
The find triggered two more weeks of intense sampling in the area.
“It is important to note that this preliminary finding does not confirm that a reproducing population of Asian carp currently exists above the electric dispersal barriers or within the Great Lakes,” the press release from the ACRCC states. “In eight consecutive years of intensive monitoring and fish sampling in the Chicago Area Waterway System, this is the second time a bighead or silver carp has been found above the electric dispersal barriers. A big head carp was found in Lake Calumet in 2010.”
