aux fins, citoyens!
May. 15th, 2004 11:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sisyphusshruggedOur frontline troops in the snakehead war: the recreational fishermen, bless 'em (I *love* this story)
The sun had barely risen when Steve Early tacked up the wanted poster on the wood piling along a Potomac tributary:
"Have you seen this fish?" read the flier, complete with a picture of the northern snakehead. "Please do not release. Please kill this fish by cutting/bleeding or freezing."
Up and down the shoreline yesterday, Early, an assistant director at the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, and other Maryland and Virginia fisheries officials canvassed marinas and boat launches, warning fishermen that they are the first line of defense against the voracious alien species plucked out of the Potomac River and its tributaries twice in the past eight days.
With no way to rid the river of the snakehead, scientists and fishermen fear the fish could undermine other species there, gobbling up the food supply that such large fish as striped and largemouth bass rely on.
"We're very concerned that there could be a spawning population" of snakeheads, Early said. Mating snakeheads, he added, could generate a "sudden explosion in their population" and feast on fish of several sizes.
"It certainly could have detrimental impacts on the populations of several other species," said Steve Minkkinen, the project leader at the Maryland Fishery Resources Office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "There's no effective fish management method we could use there."
That leaves the fishermen. "No resource agency has the power of the many, many thousands of recreational anglers that are out there on the river," Early said.
Bass fishermen, many of them gathered for a tournament in Southern Maryland yesterday, said they are taking the threat seriously.
"I'll kill him deader than hell," said Roby Johnson, 70, of the snakehead while fishing on the dock at Smallwood State Park's Sweden Point Marina in Charles County. "There's just no way you can control them. You're going to see a lot of dead bass floating around."
