It's a big problem, with no simple answers. I will say, though, that living
about 30 minutes from Northern Snakehead ground zero as I do, I support
legislation to outlaw their import. There's always some stupid idiot to
louse things up for the rest of us responsible fish keepers.
But if the northern snakehead ever got out, it just might cause numerous
local extinctions. And because of it's ability to move across land, there's
no telling how far it can travel.
The Maryland Department of Natural resources removed over 1100 hundred
snakeheads from the Crofton pond--from one pair that had been introduced
just two years before! When I seined that pond for a good two hours, all I
could come up with were 4 bluespotted sunfish.
I wrote an editorial for the Baltimore Sun, and appeared on half a dozen
local TV news broadcasts and CNN to tell people it was a bad idea to release
captive species into the wild.
What happened next? A week or two later, someone released a giant snakehead
from the Chesapeake Bay. Maybe he (or she) missed all the snakehead stories
that summer. Or maybe it was a case of someone with obsessive defiant
disorder.
In any case, in this instance, I think a law to keep out snakeheads is
warranted.
----- Original Message -----
From: <Moontanman_at_aol.com>
To: <nanfa_at_aquaria.net>
Sent: Sunday, September 15, 2002 10:28 PM
Subject: Re: NANFA-- exotics
> In a message dated 9/15/02 10:07:21 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> fundulus_at_hotmail.com writes:
>
> << Moon, I have one word for you: Florida. (This includes fish farmers
too,
> of
> course.)
> >>
> I said that Florida was an exception but even there damage is often
> exaggerated and Florida releases their own exotics for fishermen too. Can
we
> say Peacock Bass? and fish farmers in many more places than Florida are
> responsible for exotic releases and I don't mean aquarium exotics either.
> Some parts of Florida are warm enough for some tropicals to establish
> themselves there but the ones that have are mostly escapees from fish
farms
> not John Doe releasing his aquarium pets. My whole point here is that
> aquarium keepers are getting far too much of the blame because we are easy
> targets and tropical fish stand out more than fish from say the
Mississippi
> River system being released in Atlantic slope streams. but the damage is
just
> as bad if not worse but everyone seems to forget those releases and there
are
> plenty of releases from other continents to keep them company all courtesy
of
> our local government. But God help us all if a neon tetra gets dumped in a
> ditch, we could all loose the right to keep fish at all.
>
> Moon
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