Campaign to rebrand invasive Asian carp as 'copi' to attract diners and cooks is working, advocates in Illinois say

Invasive species of Asian carp

Adaptable, hearty and ugly are a few words to describe fish known as carp that advocateds are renaming "copi" to make them more attractive to cooks and diners. "It's technically a grouping of four separate [fish] species: bighead carp, grass carp, black carp, and silver carp," reports Kate Knibbs of Wired. "In the U.S., this fish is often seen as a threat, particularly to the Great Lakes," which are connected by canals to the Mississippi River system, where the species have flourished, hurting native species and warping the ecosystem, Knibbs writes. "But it's also a viable and abundant potential food source."

Amy Yang of Chicago, who fishes for copi in the Cumberland River and runs an Instagram account devoted to showcasing different ways to eat it, told Knibbs, "I grew up in China, so the fact that people weren't eating them didn't make sense to me." Knibbs writes, "She remembers seeing it on the dinner table as a child; the fish has been eaten there for thousands of years and remains popular to this day. . . . She tells everyone she meets about copi. . . . There's a growing movement of scientists, chefs, and the U.S. freshwater fishing industry working to convince Americans that it's an underrated, affordable, and eco-friendly protein."

The fish, generally known as Asian carp, came to the U.S. as grazers of grass that choked fish-farm ponds, They escapes to waterways and flourished, to detriment of other species. "Copi eat plankton and algae—so much plankton that other fish get bupkis and native populations dwindle or die out. . . . If they reach the Great Lakes, they could destroy their ecosystem," Knibbs notes. "Since 2010, Illinois Department of Natural Resources ecologist Kevin Irons has been working to promote the IDNR's preferred way to deal with copi: 'eat them'." Irons told Knibbs, "The name was a barrier. The association between Asian carp and environmental menace was too strong."

IDNR worked with an environmental tech group to rebrand "carp" into "copi," which is "a play on the word 'copious'," Knibbs reports. The rebranding has worked, she reports: "In central Illinois, distributors and fishers are jubilant that the fish is gaining traction as a food source. . . . Irons is already seeing this campaign make a difference in how many copi fill the local rivers. In the upper Illinois River, the population went down a whopping 97 percent. . . . Farther down south, where the numbers are much larger, they're already removing millions of pounds a year; as the fishing and processing infrastructure builds back up, the industry will be able to take an even more aggressive approach."

But there are reservations. "Daniel Simberloff, an ecologist at the University of Tennessee, has concerns that creating a commercial industry around copi will incentivize people to keep it around rather than kill it," Knibbs writes. "Commodification is a reasonable concern in theory, but regulations that are already in place prevent farming or otherwise raising these fish; they can only legally be caught in the wild, and anyone who tries to move them to new areas risks heavy fines. What’s more, the sheer size of the population makes eradication through commercial fishing highly unlikely."