Saturday, March 26, 2011

Preliminary tests show electric barriers won't keep small Asian carp out of the Great Lakes

The electric barrier designed to keep rapacious Asian bighead and silver carp out of the Great Lakes probably needs more voltage to stop small fish that may eventually make their way to the man-made connection of the lakes' watershed and the Mississippi River system in which they live, preliminary research indicates.

"Federal officials said Friday that lab testing found the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal's electric dispersal barriers . . . were effective for large fish 5.4 inches or longer," the Chicago Tribune's Katherine Skiba reports. "However, higher electric power levels might be needed to immobilize small Asian carp about 2 to 3 inches long, they said." The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said the closest small carp are 116 miles downstream of the barrier.

The tests were done at a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers lab in Vicksburg, Miss. "Because of the lab setting's physical limits," Skiba reports, officials said "more field research near the fish barrier system is needed." (Read more)

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