Interfering with the environment and natural processes is a dangerous game, and can lead to unintended consequences. I sure hope we know what we're doing, but seriously doubt it. In Oregon, fisherman use live minnows to catch rainbow trout in Diamond Lake, and dump their unused live bait in the lake. The minnows flourish, get really large, and take over the lake. Then the State has to come in and eradicate all fish life in the lake, and replant with trout. -- Bradford R. Crain Quoting Alfonso Vazquez-Cuervo <alvazquez_at_kayakguide.com>: > Great idea and a very encouraging story. Gives Hope! > > In Florida, unfortunately we've been dealing with invasive aquatic > plants with > expensive and toxic herbicides for years. To make matters worse, when surface > plants are killed in volume, they fall to the bottom and decay in a way that > causes even more problems for water quality. Though there is a risk in doing > anything, it seems like a carefully considered and controlled biological > attack like the carp would be safer generally. Hats off to NY state! > > Al Vazquez > KayakGuide.com > Places to Paddle > > > On Jul 19, 2011, at 10:59 AM, Moses Fridlich wrote: > >> As a point of interest regarding milfoil invasion. For the last 25 years we >> have a small cabin on a small lake here in NY. The center of the lake is >> quite deep while all around the edges the milfoil used to rage. At first >> there was an association that hired someone to remove the milfoil by the >> truck load with a special harvesting contraption. When that seemed futile >> and too costly, no one did anything anymore. We built a raft and ripped a >> path with rakes to get to the deeper water to go swimming. >> Approx. 10 - 12 years ago the N.Y.State DEC decided to make our lake an >> experiment. They took European Grass Carp sterilized them and released them >> in the lake. The first year I personally did not see any difference, >> although the DEC deemed the experiment a success. They stated that the >> number of carps were not sufficient and decided to release more of them. >> Within 2 years, the lake was totally cleared of milfoil and is still clear >> today. I have not read anything more about this but I suspect either the >> cost of releasing these fish, or the difficulty in obtaining them, or some >> other problem, is the reason that they have not been used elsewhere. *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Tue Jul 19 2011 - 09:21:09 PDT
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