Asian carp latest in line of invaders

MUSKEGON, Mich. (WOOD) - Ask angler Jason McPherson about invasive species and he'll give you a quick answer.

But it won't be about Asian carp.

"Nothing eats them, they don't taste good and they're everywhere," McPherson said. He's talking about gobies. The Muskegon fisherman said he has caught more of them in the past week than he's caught edible fish.

The invasive fish -- which, McPherson adds, are always stealing his bait -- never really got the attention Asian carp have received.

"Honestly, one, because [the carp are] big. People can see it," said Alan Steinman, the director of Grand Valley State University's Annis Water Resources Institute. "And two, it jumps. So, it's got charisma in that sense.

"Unfortunately, in the meantime -- not to minimize the potential damage that the Asian carp might do in the Great Lakes -- we do have species like the quagga and zebra mussels, which are having a true ecological impact right now."

Those mussels have been in the Great Lakes for about 20 years. Beyond the clogged water pipes that caught some initial attention, Steinman said mussels are at least partly to blame for smaller salmon in Lake Michigan.

"When we talk to the old anglers, they talk about 30, 40 pound salmon," he said. "That was a regular event to catch those and that's very rare now."

The problem, Steinman said, is that the invasive mussels take energy out of the food left for the top predators in the lake to eat.

The gobies McPherson keeps catching can do the same thing, by forcing predators such as perch and walleye to spend more time -- and energy -- looking for food.

It's like the difference between eating grass and eating a steak, Steinman said.

But, he said, we still do not know the full extent of the impact of invasive species such as the mussels.

"The trends are there and there should be a great deal of concern," Steinman said. "And I think there is, on the part of fishery managers. But right now, we're seeing a lot of political theater and more about the Asian carp than we are about our existing invasive species problems."

Hype, he said, isn't all bad. It can prompt action.

One example: a federal lawsuit filed Monday by Michigan and four other states. It seeks to close locks in Chicago in an attempt to disconnect the Great Lakes from the Mississippi River system, where Asian carp already live.

Closing that artificial connection makes sense, Steinman said.

"But people are raising these concerns of 'carpageddon' and it's based strictly on emotion and political theater. I'm not saying they're couldn't be a problem, but ... we simply don't have enough science to say whether it will or will not," he said. "And I'm always cautious about crying wolf."

Or, as McPherson puts it, "we won't know until it happens."