May, 2002, a month which will live in infamy. A Crofton, Maryland fishermen was out on the lake for a relaxing afternoon soon feels a bite on his hook. Feeling the heavy resistance of the fish, he expects at least a 2 foot Bass on the end of his hook. Instead he is confronted with an 8 inch Frankenstein looking fish, nearly scaring him into falling into the lake himself. Worried that this discovery might not be a positive one, and recognizing the fish from a picture he once saw on the internet, he bags the fish and bring it to a local game office. Upon inspection, the game wardens are terrified to find that it is in fact a Northern Snakehead fish, of the generus Channa. While the game wardens obviously knew what they were dealing with, the average American had little experience with, and knowledge of this fish. Here is presented to you, free of charge, another in an informative series, Getting to Know Your Invasive Species.
One might ask themselves first, what a Snakehead fish is. Originating in parts of Africa and Asia, these fish look like a fish right out of the age of dinosaurs, with sharp scaly spines acting as fins, razor sharp teeth all inside its mouth, and army like camouflage on its scaly skin. Snakehead fish usually tend to establish themselves in stagnant water with a mud substrate and many aquatic plants and vegetation. They also enjoy a nice muddy stream with a slow current. The Snakehead fish is a top level predator, which means as soon as it is introduced to a system; it instantly goes up to the top of the food chain. This is especially true when the Snakehead becomes an invasive species in a foreign place. As there are obviously no natural predators or threats to its existence, the Snakehead fish population can explode and cause widespread environmental degradation or destruction. Therefore, one could say that its niche is the large scale consumption of other fish, although they can also eat plankton and insects as young, and frogs and some land mammals as adults. The most terrifying part of this new fish isn’t its veracious appetite however; it is the fact that this fish can survive on dry land for several days, while migrating over dry land to new lakes, ponds, and rivers therefore spreading the species and infecting new areas that they had no direct water access to. Luckily for America however, the Snakehead fish can not travel upstream of waterfalls, and most species are not very tolerant of a high salt content in their water. Also, some kinds of Snakehead fish are temperate and can not stand temperatures any lower then 50 degrees F.
How did this species get here you may ask. Well the first documented confession was that a man near Maryland bought them at a New York Chinatown store, and brought them back to his house. While the fish themselves cost around 7 dollars, the pair of them could eat up to 15 dollars in other fish every single day. Tired of spending so much on food, but slightly attached to the fish, the man decided not to kill them, but to release them into a nearby lake. Unfortunately for America, one of the fish was male, and one was female. The female Snakehead can lay up to 10,000 eggs, and Snakeheads can reproduce more then once in a breeding season. Given the few months that the Snakeheads were still undiscovered, they established themselves in the lake and began reproducing. They quickly scaled the dry land around the lake, and spread to nearby rivers and streams, therefore making it impossible for them to be completely eliminated. The usual way of exterminating this fish, when it is found in a pond or small lake, is to infect the lake with chemicals known to most Americans as Roundup and Rodeo, which kills the aquatic vegetation in the lake, therefore drastically reducing the oxygen levels in the lake resulting in large scale fish kills. Then an agent called Rotenone is put into the lake, killing any and every fish, and dissipating in a few short days.
While those of you at home may be excited about the possibility of a Frankenstein fish, those with knowledge of economics and environmental health know that its continued spread in American could be deadly to natural life, and cost potential billions to Americans. The government now sanctions the immediate killing of any and all Snakehead fish caught by fishermen or lucky passerbies to a lake. If you see what you believe to be a Snakehead in a lake nearby to you, don’t wait, go to your local game warden now and stop the menace before it is too late and your area is invaded to!
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