2 Asian carp found in ponds near Toronto waterfront

[tweedwolfscream]

(12-02-2015 11:47 AM)zippyFX Wrote:  A new economic opportunity for Canada?

http://nowiknow.com/nothing-to-carp-about/


Why the Israeli defense minister got involved I can not fathom....

Ehud Barak is a former (Bill Clinton era) PM and at the time was leader of a government coalition member party, so one can imagine he'd have taken on high-level files outside the strictly defined defense portfolio I guess? No one's ever accomplished anything by navigating Israeli bureaucracy by the book, trust me.

Quote:For those unfamiliar with the food, it is basically meatloaf, only cold and made of fish, and typically served in fist-sized blobs instead of slices.

Ugh... they're describing that god-awful preserved gefilte fish that comes in jars on the grocery store shelf and tastes like poison. Real gefilte fish, homemade or ordered from a respectable caterer, comes in a big loaf and is served sliced. The ingredients are carp, pike and whitefish, so making it "from scratch" would be an interesting mini-multispecies challenge...

(11-23-2015 04:18 PM)MuskieBait Wrote:  I take a very wide view of ecology. I view humans as part of nature, not separated from nature. I view that, unless we stock plants and animals with an intent to propagate them in new habitats, any unintentional spread of species by our action is part of nature.

If a bird carries a fish egg from one location to another via the egg hitchhiking on the bird's body, we call that as natural spread. We do not term this as an invasion.

If a human carries a fish egg from one location to another via the egg hitchhiking on the side of the boat, we call that as anthropological spread. We term this as an invasion.

In either case, there is no intent to spread the species by the bird or the human. The introduced organism is a hitchhiker.

In parallel argument, if a Round Goby hitchhike, however impossible it may seem in the hollow of a log that drifted from the Black Sea to the St. Lawrence River, we call this as natural spread.

But if a Round Goby hitchhike in the ballast water of a transoceanic transport ship that transit between the Black Sea to the St. Lawrence River, then we call this as an invasion.

In either case, the Round Goby is a hitchhiker. There was no intent.

The truly inexcusable acts are our continued introduction of species into non-native habitat in the name of "providing additional recreational fishing opportunities". This is a selfish and ignorant act that gives zero regard to native species and ecosystems. While the US and Canada continued to prosecute invaders, the same agencies are continuing to spread non-native species based on their recreational fishing value and desirability. This is simply sickening and ill-conceived.

OK, I'll loop back and address this. Yes humans are part of the ecosystem and taking that to the extreme you could say that landscape-level industrial deforestation is part of nature running its course, just like a beaver's deforestation of a 1-acre pond. At the other extreme one could say that exhaling CO2 is an anthropogenic climate impact. I think when we talk about natural vs unnatural it's because we're valuing some conservation of balanced ecosystems from the extremely rapid (one might say catastrophic, though that's more value-laden) changes brought to bear by industrialized civilization, but yes we are part of that ecosystem. So, we have to draw the line somewhere. You've drawn it between intentional and accidental impacts; I personally wouldn't put it there, since many of this species' greatest impacts to the ecosystem have been unintentional. Including if we're speaking narrowly about introduced aquatic species. As one example, consider that most lake-dwelling brook trout populations in the Algonquin/Haliburton highlands have been decimated through the introduction of spiny-rayed fishes native to Ontario but not native to the lakes in question. In some lakes the fish in question was smallmouth bass, put there intentionally to establish a recreational fishery, and in some lakes it was perch, probably introduced accidentally through a bait bucket escape. They have a similar effect and I see no reason to draw a principled distinction between them.

So I, instead, would draw the line between impacts we have as part of our basic functions as an organism (breathing, subsistence-level harvest and land use) and those that are functions of the immense scope and technological capacity of modern society. Not that the latter is evil, just that there is value in conserving as "natural" what elements of the ecosystem have not been overturned by it.

And yes, it's possible for species to spread far from their original range through rare events like riding a log. It's just that where such a thing is feasible, it would have probably happened by now, or at least, unlikely but possible events like that would "naturally" be spread out over time such that ecosystems can adapt.

Anyway, I don't disagree with you about sport fish introductions as a bad thing that we shouldn't be doing. And neither do I blame any one party for unintentional introductions like silver carp. But neither can I really begrudge those who introduced bass up north in the 19th century; as unfortunate as the decision was, I don't know if anyone had the knowledge at the time to understand why it was wrong.