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Article Archives/Asian Carp - Black Carp

Asian Carp - Black Carp (Part 2 of a 4 part series)

USSFN 8/20/03 - The black carp is native to most Pacific drainages of eastern Asia. It was first brought to the U.S. in the early 1970’s as a “contaminant” in imported grass carp stocks delivered to a fish farm in Arkansas. The species closely resembles the grass carp in appearance, except that the gill rakers are fused and hardened (looking almost like human molars) for use in crushing the shells of mollusks and crustaceans, the black carp’s primary food.

A second importation occurred in the early 1980’s; this time for use as a food fish and as a biological control agent to combat the spread of a trematode parasite in cultured catfish. The first and only known record of escapement or release to the wild occurred in Missouri in 1994 when thirty or more black carp, along with several thousand bighead carp escaped into the Osage River in Missouri when high water flooded holding ponds at a private aquaculture facility near Lake of the Ozarks.

Black carp are currently proposed for widespread use by fish farmers for the control of snails, the intermediate host of the trematode parasite in catfish. Many Mississippi River Basin states have requested through the Mississippi Interstate Cooperative Resource Association (MICRA), that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service regulate the use of black carp by placing it on the federal list of injurious wildlife species under the Lacey Act.

Most states feel that black carp pose a serious threat to native mollusk and snail species, many of which are federally listed as threatened or endangered. Meanwhile, Mississippi, Arkansas, Texas and Missouri permit stocking of genetically altered and presumably sterile black carp in fish farm ponds. Missouri has also initiated a 5-year program to supply limited numbers of genetically altered black carp to fish farmers in the hope that state officials will be more successful than private operators in preventing the escape and spread of this non-native species.

Source: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service