Invasive Fish, Evasive Facts
Sam Aurelius Milam III
Some
time ago, I watched a rerun of Animal Invaders, season 2, episode
7 of the documentary series Secrets of the Earth. Later, I
watched a rerun of Snake Head Fish, season 1, episode 1 of Natural
Born Monsters. Even though many documentaries are more for entertainment
than for education, these presented some interesting information.
The
documentaries reported variously on an invasive species of fish called
the northern snakehead. According to Secrets of the Earth,
the species is destructively overpopulating the Chesapeake Bay. Reportedly,
the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, charged with solving the
problem, is understaffed and poorly funded. That agency, in conjunction
with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is reportedly trying to control
the fish population, but with excessively limited resources, specifically,
two small boats equipped with hand-held electric fish zappers and some
hand-held nets. Reportedly, the project participants troll around
the channels and waterways, looking for snakehead fish. When they
find one, they stun it with a zapper and capture it with a net.
According
to Natural Born Monsters, there are 35 species of snakehead fish.
During that documentary, the host and his Thai guide, investigating the
fish in Thailand, caught a striped snakehead, cooked it over a campfire,
and declared it to be a delicious fish. The Thai guide remarked that
such fish provide a lot of cheap or free food for Thai farmers. He
also commented that the population of snakehead fish in Thailand would
probably be a serious problem, if it wasn't for the large number of them
that are caught for food by the local people. According to the guide,
such fish are also available in most Thai restaurants.
Meanwhile,
in Arkansas, in contrast to the sparse efforts reportedly being made in
the Chesapeake Bay area, Operation Mongoose reportedly dumped 20,000 pounds
of poison into 400 miles of waterways. Eight agencies, several universities,
and about 200 people participated, spending $750,000, trying to eliminate
the northern snakehead fish in that region.
Whoa!
Hold your seahorses! There are commercial fishing interests all over
the world that, according to the environmentalists, are capable of depleting
the fish populations of entire oceans. On the same planet, government
agencies are trying to solve a fish overpopulation problem with two little
boats, a few fish zappers, and some hand-held nets or, elsewhere, with
thousands of pounds of poison. Maybe the documentaries were inaccurate
but, even so, I can't help but to wonder.
People
in Thailand eat the fish with gusto. People elsewhere in the world
are starving. I don't see why a large fish population should be regarded
as a problem. This looks to me like one of those times when two alleged
problems could be used to solve each other. Unrestricted private
fishing might solve the problem in this country. Failing that, a
few carefully considered changes in the commercial fishing regulations
might motivate those rapacious commercial fishing interests to do the job.
If the environmentalists are right about them, then they could do it without
even breathing hard. With a little enlightened resource management,
they might even develop a new food source for a world in which people still
suffer from hunger, or die of starvation. It their reputations are
being reported accurately, then that isn't likely but, even if they only
exterminated the entire species, then they'd still have solved the immediate
problem. The problem of hunger and starvation might not be solvable.
Is
this just another example of government stupidity, or is there something
else at work? Imagine the job security that's being generated by
the invasive fish. Maybe some of the project participants would be
out of work, if the problem was actually solved. Or, maybe the authorities
are using the problem as another excuse to enact more regulations.
Maybe the fishing interests are scheming for a reduction in industry regulations.
Maybe the makers of the documentaries want to scare us all, and sell more
documentaries. Maybe there's some other faction, somewhere, that
has an interest in perpetuating the problem.
I
don't know all of the answers and maybe I'm being too cynical. Maybe
everybody involved is behaving selflessly, and with the best of intentions.
That doesn't seem likely to me but, admittedly, not all of the facts are
in yet.
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