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Have You Heard of Asian Carp?

A former Great Lakes Echo colleague once wrote a column about the cross between invasive species and his “awkward, futile dating life,” called How Asian Carp ruined a relationship.

He discusses a date where a new lady friend admitted she had never heard of Asian carp, the invasive species ready to take over the Great Lakes and potentially ruin the $7 billion a year fishing industry. With a slightly pompous and condescending description of the impending doom, he ends the budding relationship.

Before I moved to Wisconsin, I held a similar standard for potential mates. A knowledge of Asian carp and other basic environmental issues seemed necessary. But now, in Door County, that standard does not seem to hold.

Wisconsin has a huge amount of lakeshore, and a huge number of people rely on the Great Lakes for their livelihood. As we reported in Costs of Aquatic Invasive Species Are Adding Up, Wisconsin spent $12 million dealing with aquatic invasive species (AIS) in 2009 and 2010. That’s a lot of cash.

If we add an infestation of Asian carp – giant fish that jump out of the water and eat everything in site – that number will almost certainly grow.

But for some reason, the Asian carp issue isn’t well known here. If I use it as date criteria, I’ll be almost certainly out of luck.

Maybe that means that as a reporter with an eye for eco-news I haven’t been doing my job. So here it goes, a quick list of recent events in the Asian carp world: