What Do YOU View as Invasive/Harmful?

[ballinouttacntrol]

bad point. the ecosystem is just that, a system. when you change one thing you change others you have no idea of.
for example, over fishing of salmon slows the growth of many of our old growth forests.
less salmon, less fish for the bears to catch during spawning, that's less fish carried into the forest to be eaten, with the bears leaving less because now they can't just eat their favorite parts and leave the rest to fertilize the trees. they also don't go off into the woods as far, so that reduces the area fertilized as well.
and that's a fairly direct one.

you have no idea of the impact of these kinds of things because you can't see everything that's being impacted. so what if half the fish in that lake don't belong there? maybe the heron that can't catch dinner now because the new fish don't taste good, or have spines and can't be swallowed. perhaps it's that endangered newt species that doesn't breed in that lake anymore because the invaders are better hunters, or don't fall for the tricks that the newt has evolved to escape a certain kind of fish that wasn't able to compete with the introduced fish.
so now what simply appears as a new fish on the line every now and then we have an extinct bird, an extinct newt, and who knows what else.

Lol well played playa. Thats what i mean, there's far fetching impacts that we're unable to see every time we alter the ecosystem.


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[Oddball]

^ Good idea, I debated posting it under fishing but wasn't sure. Can a mod please do the above, thank you!

I got it.

 

[divemaster99]

I got it.

Thanks!

 

[divemaster99]

bad point. the ecosystem is just that, a system. when you change one thing you change others you have no idea of.
for example, over fishing of salmon slows the growth of many of our old growth forests.
less salmon, less fish for the bears to catch during spawning, that's less fish carried into the forest to be eaten, with the bears leaving less because now they can't just eat their favorite parts and leave the rest to fertilize the trees. they also don't go off into the woods as far, so that reduces the area fertilized as well.
and that's a fairly direct one.

you have no idea of the impact of these kinds of things because you can't see everything that's being impacted. so what if half the fish in that lake don't belong there? maybe the heron that can't catch dinner now because the new fish don't taste good, or have spines and can't be swallowed. perhaps it's that endangered newt species that doesn't breed in that lake anymore because the invaders are better hunters, or don't fall for the tricks that the newt has evolved to escape a certain kind of fish that wasn't able to compete with the introduced fish.
so now what simply appears as a new fish on the line every now and then we have an extinct bird, an extinct newt, and who knows what else.

I by no means was trying to state that your points are wrong and can totally agree with you. But you can't agree that round gobies that mass devour eggs of all native fish and their fry are more of a problem than rainbow trout that have feeding patterns very similar to brook trout but don't seem to eat near as many eggs as the benthic gobies and thus while they're still harmful, are less of a harm?

 

[Gill Blue]

I'm afraid you are making assumptions in what you think you know is going on
did you know round gobies are ecologically beneficial? those fish are bringing back the aquatic snakes that lost their prey because of other invasive species. so now how do they figure? which is more important, the fish or the snakes?
and so what if the rainbows are similar to what they are replacing? because again, you don't know. let's say that the rainbows fit in exactly to the brook trout niche. do you know which infections, bacteria, or parasites rainbows are more or less susceptible to? suppose we get a virus that wipes out the rainbows that have out-competed the brooks, who weren't susceptible?
you can't say something is less harmful when you don't know how harmful it really is. and when it comes to the environment, we don't know how it's supposed to work on it's own, much less with all the crap we've done to it.

 

[divemaster99]

I'm afraid you are making assumptions in what you think you know is going on
did you know round gobies are ecologically beneficial? those fish are bringing back the aquatic snakes that lost their prey because of other invasive species. so now how do they figure? which is more important, the fish or the snakes?
and so what if the rainbows are similar to what they are replacing? because again, you don't know. let's say that the rainbows fit in exactly to the brook trout niche. do you know which infections, bacteria, or parasites rainbows are more or less susceptible to? suppose we get a virus that wipes out the rainbows that have out-competed the brooks, who weren't susceptible?
you can't say something is less harmful when you don't know how harmful it really is. and when it comes to the environment, we don't know how it's supposed to work on it's own, much less with all the crap we've done to it.

Huh, didnt know that about gobies and snakes, very interesting. I'm going to avoid making this any larger of an argument and just state that you have very good points and evidence to back them up. From my personal experience it seems that fish such as largemouth bass are much more a threat than rainbow trout, at least as far as consumption goes, but like you've said, I can't know for sure because of many factors such as pathogens and disease and most likely we'll never know unless very large and broad studies are done on introduced species of fish.

 

[skjl47]

I by no means was trying to state that your points are wrong and can totally agree with you. But you can't agree that round gobies that mass devour eggs of all native fish and their fry are more of a problem than rainbow trout that have feeding patterns very similar to brook trout but don't seem to eat near as many eggs as the benthic gobies and thus while they're still harmful, are less of a harm?

Hello; I get your point: That some sort of scale of impact can be determined from low to high. I guess it will depend on which species you favor.

Sort of like the definition of a recession or a depression. A recession being when your neighbor is out of work and a depression being when you are out of work.

Even if you came up with a scale of impact, it is likely that others will have a different point of view. To some extinction will be the most important consideration. To others the economic impact will top the list. As stated by others the overall impact may be hard to see at first and may seem modest but in the fullness of time and understanding may turn out to be as bad as the immediately obvious.

One ongoing event came to my attention a few weeks ago. I made a last fishing trip of the season trip to Norris Lake here in Tennessee. I helped a fellow place his pontoon on the trailer. The pontoon had been in the water for the season and the bottom was covered with zebra mussels. I had not realized the zebra mussel was in the Clinch River, Powell River and Norris Lake system before this. Zebra mussels will filter feed and likely remove food from the water and deprive some native organisms. There will also likely be an economic impact from the way they can clog water intakes and add to the maintenance cost of the guy’s pontoon.

 

[divemaster99]

Hello; I get your point: That some sort of scale of impact can be determined from low to high. I guess it will depend on which species you favor.

Sort of like the definition of a recession or a depression. A recession being when your neighbor is out of work and a depression being when you are out of work.

Even if you came up with a scale of impact, it is likely that others will have a different point of view. To some extinction will be the most important consideration. To others the economic impact will top the list. As stated by others the overall impact may be hard to see at first and may seem modest but in the fullness of time and understanding may turn out to be as bad as the immediately obvious.

One ongoing event came to my attention a few weeks ago. I made a last fishing trip of the season trip to Norris Lake here in Tennessee. I helped a fellow place his pontoon on the trailer. The pontoon had been in the water for the season and the bottom was covered with zebra mussels. I had not realized the zebra mussel was in the Clinch River, Powell River and Norris Lake system before this. Zebra mussels will filter feed and likely remove food from the water and deprive some native organisms. There will also likely be an economic impact from the way they can clog water intakes and add to the maintenance cost of the guy’s pontoon.

Zebra mussels very much pose a threat. From April-October I'm up at Lake Erie fishing on my boat pretty much every or every other weekend and after removing my boat for the season it took me a good 2 hours to scrape just half the mussels that were on the outdrive off! I also saw in the local paper up there at our cottage that they're now having to send down divers extremely often to pick zebra mussels of water intake pipes for public use and that they can't use a grate since then the mussels would just have more surface area to propagate on. Humans have really messed up the entire planet and all it's ecosystems, hard to believe some people still think we've done nothing wrong as a species.

 

[divemaster99]

Found an interesting article on nanfa while skimming some old american currents articles. It's about introduced species and what we can do about it.

http://www.nanfa.org/articles/bockedit.shtml

I love the author's idea at the end that if you don't want to kill the invasive fish and have tank/pond space to take it home with you, that's definitely something I'd do if I had enough tanks for all the carp I catch . That may be feasible for species such as trout however for those that have the budget to keep them.

 

[Dieselhybrid]

Worst invasive species?

Human beings.