I know that Casper had an unsettling experience with koi outside of
Huntsville, AL, on Saturday. I had told him about a really beautiful spring
that contains the healthiest population of flame chubs in Madison County,
AL, I've found in over a year of looking. The spring is the centerpiece of a
park that belongs to the neighborhood association of a new upscale
subdivision. When I visited a year ago, we just parked on the street, pulled
a seine through a few times, found various fishes, and left. Now the
property is posted No Trespassing, mostly because they've been herbiciding
the spring run for "unsightly algae" which is dumb enough in its own right.
But as Casper was leaving after receiving permission to snorkel, a guy
pulled up with a trash bag full of koi and cheerfully told Casper he was
going to put them in the spring. Casper tried to reason with him. The guy of
course thought Casper was insane for objecting to the introduction of such
beautiful fish to this spring, and anyway the developer was a friend of his
who let him do this. Casper was powerless to stop it, and this chump merrily
went down and released koi into the spring pool. The good news is that this
pool is full of large green sunfish so in truth the whole operation was
probably just feeding already large greens.
Would a law stop super-stupid actions like this? No, but it would-in-least
slow it down and allow sanctions against perps. Maybe we're just trying to
order the tide not to come in.
--Bruce Stallsmith
some flame chubs still hang on along the Tennessee
Huntsville, AL, US of A
>From: dlmcneely-in-lunet.edu
>Reply-To: nanfa-l-in-nanfa.org
>To: nanfa-l-in-nanfa.org
>Subject: Re: NANFA-L-- Interesting news article
>Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 08:33:55 -0500
>
>Help me out a little. Koi are carp, _Cyprinus carpio_. Has this fish
>only now become a problem in Maine? Why the new law? Is the fish any
>worse in its Koi form than in its more typical wild form? Are Koi a
>source of pathogens for wild fish (other than carp)? What do Koi do
>in the wild. Do they revert in a short number of generations to wild
>type carp?
>
>Just trying to understand.
>
>Dave
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