"The Asian carp, which has been working its way north from the Mississippi Delta since the 1990s, is now on the verge of reaching the Great Lakes. This voracious invader, which weighs up to 100 pounds and eats half its body weight in food in a day, has gained notoriety for vaulting over boats and breaking the arms and noses of recreational anglers. Having outcompeted all native species, it now represents 95 percent of the biomass of fish in the Illinois River and has been sighted within 25 miles of Lake Michigan. The only thing preventing this cold-water-loving species from infesting the Great Lakes, the largest body of fresh water in the world, is an electric barrier on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal.“ This amazing and disturbing scenario appears in an essay by Taras Grescoe ("How to Handle an Invasive Species? Eat It“, The New York Times, 20 Feb 08). Yet again, waking world events take on the outlandish tone of a 1950s grade B science fiction movie.
Grescoe contextualizes this scenario. "One of the great unsung epics of the modern era is the worldwide diaspora of marine invasive species. Rising water temperatures brought on by global warming have allowed mauve stingers and harmful algae to thrive far beyond their native habitats. Supertankers and cargo ships suck up millions of gallons of ballast water in distant estuaries and ferry jellyfish, cholera bacteria, seaweed, diatoms, clams, water fleas, shrimp and even good-sized fish halfway around the globe.“
The impact of this inter-oceanic transports is enormous. "According to one estimate, invasive species in the United States cause major environmental damage and losses totaling about $137 billiion per year.“
The nightmarish onslaught can be stopped, it seems. "There is an easy solution, however: if cargo ships were required to empty and refill their ballast tanks at sea, rather than in harbors and estuaries, marine invasions could be brought to a near standstill.“ As they say, this doesn’t seem like rocket science.
However, creators of this nightmare are not amenable to changing their behavior. "So far, ship owners the world over have blocked laws seeking to limit shipping’s role in spreading bio-invaders.“
In the face of such resistance to change, the author, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, proposes another approach to help abate the results of the nightmare. "IInvan the absence of any concrete action by the shipping industry, I would like to make a modest proposal.“ The proposal? "It is high time we developed a taste for invasive species.“
He explains that this is not as outlandish as it might seem. He relates another waking nightmare. "On the Yangtze River, the Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest hydroelectric project, has increased the amount of phosphorus and nitrogen in the waters off China, creating an ideal breeding ground for Nomura’s jellyfish, a monstruous 450-pound creature that can tear apart fishing nets. In the summer of 2005, a half-billion were estimated to be floating from the shores of China to the Sea of Japan every day, forming a ring of slime around the entire nation.“
There was a clever waking-life response to this invasion. "The citizens of Fukui, a northern Japanese island, coped by marketing souvenir cookies flavored with powdered jellyfish. Returning from a fact-finding mission to China, a professor from Japan’s National Fisheries University offered up 10 different recipes for preparing Nomura’s jellyfish. 'Making them a popular food,‘ he told a Japanese newspaper, 'is the best way to solve the problem.‘"
If you can’t beat 'em, eat 'em!