Thread: Snakeheads and other invasive species

Fuck me, this is scary.

Biologists at British Columbia's Simon Fraser University are studying the invasive predator known as the snakehead fish caught in a Burnaby pond earlier in June.

The fish was caught by biologists last week after they partially drained a pond in Burnaby's Central Park following previous unsuccessful attempts. The fish was killed shortly after being captured.

Biologists will now dissect the fish and send tissue samples to the University of British Columbia and the province's Ministry of Environment to determine its sex, what it had been eating and how long it had been in the pond.

SFU grad student Michael Beakes says concerns about the alien predator are well founded.

"They can reproduce multiple times per year and each female can produce up to 15,000 to 50,000 eggs per spawning event," he said. "They can double their population size within 15 months."

Snakeheads are native to freshwater in Russia and China and have few predators when fully grown. They are considered highly invasive, can grow up to a metre in length and have small but sharp teeth.

They are reported to have wiped out native fish stocks in parts of the U.S., and are said to eat frogs, birds and even small pets.

They are also capable of breathing oxygen and squirming short distances over land.

The search for the snakehead began after a Burnaby resident posted video of the fish on YouTube.

SFU grad student Corey Phillis says it's a good thing the resident raised the alarm.

"It's good to have someone out there that knew what they were looking at and knew of the dangers of having that fish potentially becoming established in our local waterway."

Beakes said the snakehead's carcass will be preserved.

"We plan to send it to the Royal Museum of British Columbia, where it will be stored in its collections."

I can't believe somebody would release a fish like this into the wild, where it doesn't belong.

Believe it. One snakehead in a public park pond is not the typical outbreak of snakehead. Snakehead is a very popular food fish in parts of Asia. The snakehead invasions are usually traced back to recent immigrants who release them in the wild to "stock" the fish they want to eat. In one case, in florida, I think, the culprits planned to have a fishery for selling to asian restaurants and markets. So money may be a motive or maybe folks just miss a favorite meal from the old country. It is apparently still going on despite strict new rules. Now why can't they just eat off all those silver carp.... Parts of Florida are overrun with them so, despite rules on importing live snakehead, it's no challenge to go to Florida, fill up a cooler with these hardy lungfish and drive them to a new home. At any rate, future generations in the southern U.S. will probably be holding snakehead tournaments in places where bass was once the king. There is a cold water species, the northern snakehead, that is capable of invading the salmonid river systems of western north america.

Wow, seriously that's ridiculous... Who would want to fuck up a ponds ecosystem and kill everything in it.. Messed up.

The should have nuked the pond it was little more than a dumping ground for pets. Good that they got it, the solution is PR with the threat of eliminating live food fish. Let people know what they are doing then if that fails ban the import of live potential invasives.

These things are horrible, HORRIBLE creatures - In MD they were giving away gift cards to people who killed them. They've created havoc with the bass population all over New Jersey.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow...163943568.html

Asian Carp is a much more serious epidemic.

I had a Snakehead as a pet once. Nasty fucker- would jump out of the water and bite you if you stuck your hand over the tank. Ultimate predator, scared of nothing. Mine was only 1 ft long. I can't imagine how aggressive the really big ones are.

I had a Piranha too. Pedro. He was bad ass, but the Snakehead was scary. Pedro was predictable.