It’s the weekend again and I’ve no idea where the weeks go. Is it me or did it seem a few weeks ago that we were still hanging on to the last days of Summer and now we’re facing the Holidays, Winter and all that goes with it! I’m excited about the New Year though, there is something a bit special about entering a new decade and I think (for many reasons including eco-awareness and change) the next decade is going to be a really important one for all of us. We’ve got a rule book now – can we follow it? So….the Green Gazette, I’ve scoured a special green story for your perusal so if you’d stay a while I’ll get right to it.

My featured eco-story is a fish tale (as opposed to a fish tail) and it concerns Lake Michigan. I’ll never forget the first time I saw the Great Lakes (and Lake Michigan was the first one I saw), bear in mind I come from a country that’s smaller than Illinois, so when I first visited Chicago and saw the lake shore I was pretty amazed. To me a lake was something you could almost throw a stone across or certainly row across, confronted with this ‘lake’ where you couldn’t even see the other side with 3-4 foot waves was something else. If you’ve never been to the Midwest or lower central Canada trying to explain the Great Lakes is quite difficult as they are essentially inland oceans. Lake Michigan is the 2nd largest of the Great Lakes and the 5th largest lake on earth. At over 300 miles long and 100 miles wide and in places is over 800 feet deep with a large network of sand dunes on it’s Eastern shores. As a result it’s no surprise that such a large body of water has it’s own finely balanced eco-system, and I’m alarmed to read that the aquatic balance is currently at risk. The culprit is a sea fish that doesn’t belong in the lake but has been successfully migrating as it has somehow broken the barriers designed to prevent it taking residence in the lake. The fish in question is the Asian Carp – a fish that grows to over 4 feet in length and can weigh in excess of 100lbs. This monster of the lakes would consume an inordinate amount  of plankton and thus make it very difficult for many smaller creatures to survive and could rapidly alter the entire balance of the lake.

So just how did the Asian Carp arrive in…the Midwest? In the 1970′s catfish farmers imported many of these fish to ‘work’ on their farms to reduce algae and act as a cleanser fish within the catfish farm. During the many severe floods during the early and mid 1990′s along the Mississippi River and it’s basin many of these fish were flooded out of their farming homes and escaped into the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. The Asian Carp have then spent the intervening years growing in number along the Mississippi , Illinois, Rock and Calumet Rivers and kept heading Northeast until they reached Chicago. So what’s an Asian Carp to do when it hits the big city? It’s found a way to navigate the locks and protection systems of the Calumet River and has now apparently entered Lake Michigan. The US EPA are working hard to combat this as the potential to seriously damage the eco-system of the lake certainly is a huge concern. Let us not forget that if this intrepid fish takes residence in Lake Michigan the other four Great Lakes are also at risk due to the fact they are all connected. I think it’s a story that’s equal parts fascinating and concerning. You can learn more about via this link and the original EPA post five years ago? (it seems their concerns were well founded) also the video beneath. Hopefully the next piece of news relating to this will be good !! The Great Lakes sport fishery is (remarkably) a $7 billion annual concern.

Tags: Asian Carp, Calumet River, catfish farming, Chicago, eco-system, Environmental protection agency, EPA, EPA Warning, great lakes eco-system, lake michigan, mississippi river, missouri river, planet forward, the great lakes