I could have sworn that I posted that rant in a differant thread....
Maybe I'm having a senior moment and did post it here. If not...hmm....censorship?
Oh well.
As you can see my concern is the potential damage that these fish can do. I mean no disrespect to anyone that wants to keep them but most environmental disasters are the result of the innocent activities of well intentioned, experienced, intelligent, honourable people, who are willing to take the risk.
I have no doubt that these fish will become established in southern US waterways along with many other unwanted alien species, and perhaps all I'm doing is throwing a deck chair off the Titanic in raising the issue.
A good friend of mine and I were fishing in the St. Lawrence river west of Ogdensburgh in the early 90's. Doug was always a luckier fisherman than I and this day was no exception. He caught a fish on bass tackle that weighed in at 4lbs, that neither of us had ever seen before. After a week of research we found out that it was a juvenile Nile perch! There is no way that it could have survived a winter in that river and must have been either released or discharged in ballast water from an Egyptian freighter. We'll never know and neither of us ever caught another one.
My only hope is that there are enough people out there interested in keeping native fishes and that the collections are comprehensive enough that we dont loose our biodiversity before we really understanding what it is and how it all fits together.
Thanks for reading.....
Maybe I'm having a senior moment and did post it here. If not...hmm....censorship?
Oh well.
As you can see my concern is the potential damage that these fish can do. I mean no disrespect to anyone that wants to keep them but most environmental disasters are the result of the innocent activities of well intentioned, experienced, intelligent, honourable people, who are willing to take the risk.
I have no doubt that these fish will become established in southern US waterways along with many other unwanted alien species, and perhaps all I'm doing is throwing a deck chair off the Titanic in raising the issue.
A good friend of mine and I were fishing in the St. Lawrence river west of Ogdensburgh in the early 90's. Doug was always a luckier fisherman than I and this day was no exception. He caught a fish on bass tackle that weighed in at 4lbs, that neither of us had ever seen before. After a week of research we found out that it was a juvenile Nile perch! There is no way that it could have survived a winter in that river and must have been either released or discharged in ballast water from an Egyptian freighter. We'll never know and neither of us ever caught another one.
My only hope is that there are enough people out there interested in keeping native fishes and that the collections are comprehensive enough that we dont loose our biodiversity before we really understanding what it is and how it all fits together.
Thanks for reading.....
