Black Carp Controversy

From March 7, 1994 (update #20)

Aquaculturists in Missouri and Arkansas are proposing to raise black carp as a means of controlling zebra mussels. The black carp, which is native to Asia, is reportedly capable of eating mollusks as big as golf balls.

In response, the North-Central Division of the American Fisheries Society last December passed a resolution stating that management agencies should "take immediate steps to eliminate all existing populations of the black carp now in North America."

As one biologist said in the UMRCC newsletter, "How are they going to teach black carp which mussels (zebra) they are allowed to eat and those (Unionids) which they are not?".

ID: 19940307-11.

The Zebra Mussel Update was a 4- to 8-page quarterly national newsletter published by the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute from May 1990 through May 1997. The ZMU documented the spread of the zebra mussel -- an exotic nuisance mussel -- through North America's freshwater environments, especially the Great Lakes, and on efforts to control it.