Grave News on Lake Erie

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BuffaloPolypteridae

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Aug 5, 2013
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I'm at work right now so ill post a link to the story when I get out, but some people doing a fish survey on Erie have found a small group of the dreaded Asian Carp.

There are a lot of different opinions on this matter, and I for one will be heartbroken if I can't go wakeboarding there anymore. The one that honestly has made the most sense to me is introduce a native predator to eat them. The only native predator large enough for this is the Alligator Gar.

What does MFK think about re-introducing the gator gar to the great lakes? they used to be here, until the whole "gar madness" took hold and they executed every one they caught back in the 1800s. Now we have a big fish that is dangerous to water sportsman and boaters alike, not to mention the local populations of vegetarian fish.

this literally seems to be the only course of action that makes sense, mass netting would hurt the local populations, any sort of poison would kill everything.

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With any luck the wakeboarding won't be affected unless the strain they found are the same as the ones in the chicago river, that jump with motor disturbances.
It is, however, a tragic event that invasive species are sometimes better at survival in an ecosystem than native species.
I'm not too sure about introduction as a solution to any invasive problem, but it does seem that sooner or later we will be able to catch any type of fish out of the great lakes
 
yeah for real. snakeheads will be here sooner or later and are already spotted in some great lakes (not erie yet as far as I know). The gar is native though, it would be like re introducing lions to a african preserve w/ an overpopulation of prey animals. it just makes sense to me, then we can fish for some gator gar :) caught a 3 footer down in texas on the trinity it was a hard fight

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Where abouts did you see that article? Those things are a real problem... I wet slip out of Sturgeon Point and dread seeing these things up here..
 
My concerns about introducing the alligator gars from southern regions to the coldwater Great Lakes may spell trouble for the alligator gars since there are no breeding populations of Alligator gars in northern regions currently so the gars of southern regions might not able to tolerate low temperatures. Also they may not able to keep up with the Asian carps and their rapid reproduction rates.
 
2 problems I see is that the carp will outgrow the gars exponentially. Gars take a very long time to get to a larger size. The other issue is that the carp are capable of reproducing at alarming rates, much faster than gars could. I also wouldn't be too keen on wakeboarding knowing a 5-8' gator gar could be swimming right underneath me with razor sharp teeth. I know they haven't attacked people, but they always could.
 
strollo22 said:
2 problems I see is that the carp will outgrow the gars exponentially. Gars take a very long time to get to a larger size. The other issue is that the carp are capable of reproducing at alarming rates, much faster than gars could. I also wouldn't be too keen on wakeboarding knowing a 5-8' gator gar could be swimming right underneath me with razor sharp teeth. I know they haven't attacked people, but they always could.
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That's why they were extirpated from most native ranges due to their large size that us humans feared of, and the last northern Alligator gar that's verified in extremely northern region was in 1922.
 
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