Asian Carp Case Study

The invasion of sliver carp and bighead carp collectively known as Asian carp has been an ongoing problem since the mid-1990s. These Asian carp escaped from confinement when they were brought to the United States (Irons et al. 2007). They were brought here for aquaculture or also known as aquafarming (Ruebush 2012). They eventually reached the Upper Mississippi River System or UMRS (Irons et al. 2007). The Asian carp are causing many problems such as negative impacts on native communities for example the gizzard shed and bigmouth buffalo fish and certain groups have been and are continuing to work on strategies such as eDNA and Sound-bubble barrier to keep the population contained.
These Asian carps are messing up native communities that they live in. They cause
Asian carp populations are continuing to grow and this means that they are consuming more native fish and plankton. According to Irons et al., the Asian carp population is not declining. Irons and the rest of his team went out and caught fish in La Grange Reach, Illinois River and saw how many Asian carps they had collected. They then compared it to annual totals from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. When they did this the results were that Asian carp have increased in La Grange Reach from 1990-2005 in commercial harvest and biomass. Their analysis also shows that there will be a continued increase in population size (Irons et al. 2007). They also did a study to see how other types of fish communities were affected by the Asian carp. The other species of fish were gizzard shed and bigmouth buffalo. The research team studied the decline before Asian carp were a big problem. After the integration, of Asian carp the gizzard shed and bigmouth buffalo declined rapidly. There were not very many other factors that could have attributed to the decline in these fish. The water quality, primary productivity, predator-prey interactions,