Researchers at the University of Minnesota are using loudspeakers and uninviting sounds to keep these invasive fish out of the upper Mississippi River.
Photo by Jason Jenkins
Transcript of the Audio Podcast:
Invasive carp get an earful of uninviting sounds… on this CurrentCast.
Invasive carp are breaching Mississippi headwaters – slipping through locks and dams and threatening to disrupt the ecosystems they enter. Peter Sorensen, a biologist at the University of Minnesota, says when two Asian carp were netted in Minnesota waters this year, it was a wake-up call.
Sorensen: “A few adults don’t cause much harm… my fear is if we get enough here, and they start to reproduce and become self-sustaining, then we’ve got a very difficult situation.”
But Sorensen says the big fish are poor swimmers and hate loud noise. So high velocity water jets and sonic rumblings from submersible speakers could keep the carp downstream.
Support for CurrentCast comes from the Mitsubishi Corporation Foundation for the Americas. Learn more online at http://www.currentcast.org.
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