Abbot and Costello meet the Snakehead

[sisyphusshrugged]

The snakehead returns.

For those of you who have not been following the saga of the snakehead, the eponymous snakehead is a fish which is considered a delicacy in China, and which was imported illegally by a gentleman who wanted to, I guess, eat snakehead.

Unfortunately, it ended up being released in a Maryland pond. More unfortunately, it's a voracious predator. Seriously unfortunately, it's capable of walking short distances on land to get to bodies of water where it will be the meanest son-of-a-snakehead in the valley.

Local authorities are very concerned that the snakehead, if it gets into the local river ecosystem, will devastate the fish populations. It has no natural predators hereabouts.

They can't drain the Potomac.

When a 19-inch female northern snakehead was caught in Wheaton's Pine Lake last month, authorities emptied the entire lake. No more were found.

Maryland officials will have to come up with another way to determine how many are making a home in the river. Another northern snakehead, a voracious Asian fish that can breathe air and wriggle across land, was caught on the river's Maryland shore Wednesday, state officials announced yesterday.

The 12-inch fish was hooked by an angler in Charles County, just across from the spot in Virginia where one was caught last Friday.

The two fish were about the same size and the same age. Maryland officials said they worried it was not a coincidence.

"One snakehead in the river doesn't bother me a whole lot," said Steve Early, associate director of the fisheries service for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. "But when you catch two of them in such close proximity, it really worries me that about how many more there might be."

The newest snakehead was caught by a fisherman at the boat ramp for Marshall Hall, a historic mansion near the Prince George's County line. Early said the fisherman was carrying the snakehead when he ran into state natural resources personnel, who were in the area on a fish-stocking project.

They confirmed it was a northern snakehead, a native of China and Korea with rows of large teeth. The fish was female, likely a year old and not ready to spawn this year, Early said. It was not clear if the fish had spawned last year...

Earlier episodes of l'affaire snakehead:

the advent of the snakehead

Late-breaking snakehead news: they decided to poison the pond

snakehead found in NC lake

hooboy, did they poison that pond

xposted

Comments

[serialkarma.livejournal.com]

Ah yes. We got a plague of cicadas on land, a plague of snakeheads in the water, and a plague of idiots in the White House. It's a great time to be living in DC.

[jmhm.livejournal.com]

ogod, I'm looking at that in the e-mail and I realized I put the eponymous in the wrong place.

Never post when you need a nap.

[serialkarma.livejournal.com]

Never post when you need a nap.

oh, words to live by indeed!

[greyaenigma.livejournal.com]

I made reference to the snakehead the other day to someone, an they had no idea what I was talking about. They need to genetically combine them with sewer alligators and killer bees so we have a menace worth remembering.

[(Anonymous)]

heh, look at what you make me do. google google...

Look at this 'giant snakeheads'. It's pretty big. Apparently it's a native south east asia big river fish. I am surprised it can survive winter. (but then again it's Maryland, it doesn't get very cold)

http://fisc.er.usgs.gov/Snakehead_circ_1251/html/channa_micropeltes.html