Out fishing

House committee votes to ban Asian carp

The AP: The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday voted to ban imports of Asian carp, a fish that officials from Great Lakes states fear will wreak havoc on the lakes' ecosystems.

"This invader is a threat to the Great Lakes' multibillion-dollar fishing industry and Wisconsin's fishing tradition," said Rep. Mark Green, R-Wis., the bill's sponsor. "We have an obligation to stop it while we can."

The bill would ban the importation and interstate transfer of Asian carp, which southern fish farmers use to control parasites.

Some carp have escaped the farms and made their way north along the Mississippi River and its tributaries, and could soon push into the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes region, the world's largest surface freshwater system, already is battling other exotic species, such as zebra mussels.

The committee chairman, Wisconsin Republican Jim Sensenbrenner, noted that Asian carp can grow to over 100 pounds.

"Now these pests are moving upstream towards the Great Lakes, threatening the food supply of sport fish such as the yellow perch, walleye and smallmouth bass and threatening fishermen as well," he said. ...

Rep. Marion Berry, D-Ark., said the southern aquaculture industry has already agreed to a ban of fertile Asian carp, which would allow fish farmers to continue to use sterile versions of the fish. The idea would be that if the sterile fish made their way to the Great Lakes, they could not reproduce.

"I think this law is overkill," Berry said. "We've got agreement in the industry that these sterile fish are safe to use, and they're critical to the mid-South aquaculture industry to control various problems that they have."

But backers of Green's bill question the enforceability of such a modified ban.

Berry also said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service should be making the call on this, not Congress. The agency has not acted on a proposal made several years ago to ban the importation of black carp, a species of Asian carp favored by southern fish farmers.

"My goodness gracious, it's not like we don't have enough to do in the Congress to deal with serious matters," Berry said. "We can't micromanage the whole world."

My gosh, just drop the word 'carp' and you've got a dream bill come true for a lot of Republicans.

Talk about yellow peril... it's ironic, the Bush administration has pushed our overall trade deficit to an all-time high, and Congress is bickering over overgrown goldfish.

Image of Asian carp via Goldfish Utopia.