Snakehead Blues
Posted September 1st, 2002
It's like "something from a bad horror movie"! This is how Maryland's Interior Secretary Gale Norton described the most widely reported environmental emergency
this summer.
The emergency? The Asian snakehead fish.
The snakehead is an intriguing fish native to China. They have a voracious appetite, gobbling up everything they can get their teeth on. This includes other fish,
birds, frogs, and even their own offspring. Snakeheads seem to defy nature by being able to crawl on dry land for several days at a time, searching for prey.
In their native habitat, these three-foot oddities have natural predators and a specific habitat. However, in a small town in Crofton, Maryland (near Washington, D.C.),
the snakeheads made an unscheduled appearance.
A local resident bought the fish from a market in New York to make soup for an ailing relative. He kept the fish alive at home, but soon his relative got better and
the cost of feeding the carnivorous fish became too much. Hoping to get rid of the creatures, he dumped them in the pond.
In only a short amount of time, the snakehead fish thrived, producing more than 100 offspring. Even after state officials began treating the pond with herbicide in
hopes of killing off plant life and shutting down the oxygen supply to the fish, the snakeheads continued to survive. In fact, their uncanny nature to withstand treatment has earned
the snakeheads the nickname "frankenfish."
Maryland officials know that if the snakehead managed to escape the pond, they would wreak havoc in the local ecosystem. There are no natural predators of the snakehead
in Maryland, and officials feared that it would have a devastating affect on the local environment - especially if they reached the Little Patuxent River, which is located just 250 feet
from the pond.
As a secondary tactic, officials built a fence around the pond to catch any snakeheads slithering across the land. Then they sprayed the pond with a pesticide called
Rotenone. This poison blocks oxygen from getting to the fish's blood, killing them.
On September 4, 2002, officials sprayed the Rotenone onto the pond. The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) lobbied against the use of the poison because
it was inhuman, however, they agreed that the fish must be destroyed in this particular habitat.
By Thursday morning, September 5, game officials claimed victory over the alien creatures. Eight hundred pounds of dead fish - including a large number of snakeheads
- floated to the surface. Countless others had sunk to the bottom and are expected to resurface when they start decomposing.
Activity
Use the Internet to research the snakehead fish. In your Science Journal, write an essay about what could happen if the snakeheads were released in the wild throughout
this country.
References
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