Snakeheads, quagga mussels are nuisances, Plant Board panel says
Posted on Friday, August 22, 2008
The snakehead fish — with its fearsome but unwarranted reputation — and the lowly quagga mussel are wiggling their way toward possible official status as nuisances in Arkansas.
The State Plant Board’s aquaculture committee recommended Thursday that the entire snakehead family and the quagga mussel be listed as aquatic nuisance species for purposes of Arkansas’ bait and ornamental fish certification program.
The quagga mussel and all 29 species of snakeheads are of great concern to wildlife regulators in the northern United States, where many of Arkansas’ bait and ornamental fish are shipped, said Andrew Goodwin, associate director of the Aquaculture / Fisheries Center at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.
“The snakehead has gotten a lot of attention, because it’s been found in the wild in Arkansas. The quagga mussel, which is present in the Great Lakes and is a lot like the zebra mussel, is not known to be present in Arkansas,” Goodwin said.
“When you associate the word ‘snakehead’ and Arkansas and then live fish coming out of here — baitfish that are going to go into natural bodies of water as bait — a lot of people start connecting dots, assuming that all three go hand in hand,” said Eric Park, president of the Arkansas Bait and Ornamental Fish Growers Association.
“We don’t even want somebody to make those connections by accident... and all of a sudden shut us out of markets,” he said. “That was the whole impetus for the certification program, to allay the fears of other states’ regulatory agencies.”
The northern snakehead, Channa argus, which was discovered earlier this year in Piney Creek in Monroe and Lee counties, is an ambush predator, said Carole Engle, director of UAPB’s Aquaculture / Fisheries Center. Snakeheads have not been found in any surrounding states, but Maryland and New York are both battling the pest, she said.
Like any species, snakeheads have the potential for impact, but “there’s more emotion around this fish than fact,” Engle said. “There have been a series of science-fiction movies about genetically engineered snakeheads that climb ladders and attack people on the roofs of houses,” she said.
The possession of snakeheads has been prohibited in Arkansas since 2002, and “the Game and Fish Commission is working hard to try to eradicate them,” Engle said.
“They are thought to be confined to Piney Creek, they are not good swimmers, and they’re not going to hike across land,” she said.
Snakeheads live along the vegetative edges of water bodies, where they can survive during droughts because they are airbreathers, Engle said. “They really distribute and spread during flooding events,” she said.
Arkansas, the No. 1 baitfish producer, sold more than $ 20 million worth of baitfish in 2005, according to the 2005 Census of Aquaculture. Wild baitfish producers are the state’s major competitors.
Twelve of the state’s bait and ornamental fish farms, with a total of more than 12, 000 water-surface acres, currently are certified through the voluntary program, which is administered by the Plant Board. These farms account for a majority of Arkansas’ baitfish acreage, Park said.
The voluntary certification program, which was launched in 2007, is designed to give Arkansas bait and ornamental fish farmers a marketing edge and ensure that they can ship their live product across state lines, even during disease outbreaks or quarantines.
To qualify, a farm currently must test negative for four serious fish diseases and be found free of 11 aquatic nuisance species: eight animals and three plants. Disease inspections must be conducted each spring and fall, and nuisancespecies inspections are done every summer.
The aquaculture committee’s recommendation regarding snakeheads and the quagga mussel will be presented to the full Plant Board in September. If approved during that meeting, the rulechange recommendation would be the subject of a public hearing in December and then a final vote by the board.
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