Incoming! Airborne Carp
Aerial Assault Of Slimy Bowling Balls1
“No one expects the Spanish Inquisition,” an observation immortalized by Monty Python, has come to be recognized a universal truth. I now submit as an appendix that darn few folks on the languid waters of the Missouri and Illinois Rivers anticipate being battered by bevies of 20 pound, silver, slime-covered, creatures whose family home is the Yangtze River.
Silver Carp
According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in 1973, an Arkansas fish farmer first brought silver carp from its native habitat of China’s Yangtze River to the U.S. to control algae and other wastes in sewage lagoons and fish farms. By the 1980’s, silver carp had appeared in the Mississippi River Basin where it has successfully competed with native fish, including paddlefish, bigmouth buffalo, and gizzard shad, for plankton, which the typical silver carp consumes at a rate of two to three times its body weight daily. The species has since migrated to the Missouri and the Ohio rivers and can currently be found in 15 states. Biologists fear they will next appear in the Great Lakes.
Jump
In addition to being a super-efficient competitor, the silver carp, which 
can grow to three feet long and weigh up to 60 pounds, are outstanding jumpers, leaping as high as ten feet above the water. Boaters, water skiers, conservationists, jet skiers, and fishermen have been hit by silver carp, knocking some from their boats and causing others concussions and broken vertebrae, legs, and arms.
The jumping appears most reliably triggered by boat motors but may also be occasioned by other noises.
Noting that the Chinese prize the fish as a delicacy to the point that the Yangtze is nearly fished out, biologists hold out the hope is that Americans will develop a taste for the silver carp, driving demand to the point that it is profitable for fishermen to target the species.
Video
A video of these leaping fish showing the fish leaping is available
On an embedded video player at
Jumping Carp Video - Embedded Player
Or at Youtube via this link:
Jumping Carp Video - Youtube
Credit Due Department
Top photo taken by Mike Smith, Illinois River Biological Station, Illinois Natural History Survey
Footnotes
- The evocative phrase, “Slimy Bowling Balls,” was offered by one Duane Chapman, a fisheries biologist interviewed in Boaters Beware: Things Are Jumping On Missouri River. John Fialka. Wall Street Journal. 8 Nov 2006 ~back~
