06-01-2006, 02:57 PM
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Officials host time trial for carp removal [url "javascript: void(0);"] PDF [/url] [url "javascript:void(0)"] | Print | [/url] [url "javascript: void(0);"] E-mail [/url]
CALEB WARNOCK - Daily Herald
Whether with a single pole or three commercial boats and a 100-foot seine, nothing is promised in fishing.
Utah Lake officials are holding a three-week time trial of sorts to see how many carp a crew of professional commercial fishermen can remove from Utah Lake.
In order to return Utah Lake to something resembling its natural condition, and save the June sucker, one of the most endangered fish in the world, 7.5 million adult carp must be removed from Utah Lake, said Reed Harris of the June sucker recovery program.
With an average of 120 days each year when it is safe or productive to fish, program managers must find a way to remove about 8,600 fish per day -- each weighing an average of 5.8 pounds -- in order to remove 1 million carp a year for seven years.
Results of the time trials will be used to determine whether professional fishers can do the job, and on Tuesday the results were not as good as had been hoped.
On his best day ever, Bill Loy Jr., who is a fourth-generation commercial carp fisher on Utah Lake, has removed 128,000 pounds of fish. But on Monday, the first day of the time trial, Loy's crews were able to remove only 6,000 pounds total in six net captures, most of that -- 4,000 pounds -- in the second net capture.
On Tuesday, with publicists, journalists, photographers and state officials watching from a nearby boat, Loy's luck was equally spotty. The first net capture resulted in a mere 70 pounds of carp. The second net capture came up with 3,000 pounds.
Loy has been contracted for 10 days of fishing over the next three weeks and is being paid 15 cents per pound, said Chris Keleher of the June sucker recovery program. Called a pilot project, results of the time trial will be used to determine what kind of effort would be needed to consistently remove about 8,600 fish a day for 120 days each year for seven years.
If at the end of the pilot project it appears that seine fishing -- using a net with floats along the top and weights along the bottom -- will not be an economically feasible method, other methods could be considered, including trawling and perhaps even poisoning, Harris said.
The process of removing carp requires hard physical labor. On Tuesday, Loy and three men boarded three 18-foot-long, 6-foot-wide steel boats and traveled about 30 minutes into Goshen Bay on Utah Lake's south end. Once there, crews put out a 100-foot-long, 10-foot-wide seine.
Working in water 3 feet deep and wearing chest waders, the men pulled the net into a circle and then slowly tightened the circle by pulling the net in foot by foot, throwing carp caught in the net into the circle while throwing out white bass, catfish and tamarisk branches.
Eventually several hundred carp were captured in a pocket at the center of the net. Loy's crew then pulled two boats side by side with the net pocket in the middle and scooped the fish into a boat. Fighting furiously, the fish flipped water and scales over a dozen feet, roiling dark mud in the process.
Once all the carp were removed from the net, the fish were taken 30 minutes back to the shore, where a gas-powered auger was used to load them into a waiting trash bin. Eventually the fish will be taken to the Elberta solid waste district to be turned into compost.
June sucker recovery program managers believe that removing as many as possible of the 7.5 million adult carp in the lake will decimate the population to a level that will allow the lake to begin returning to its natural condition.
Bottom feeders that spend all day rooting up the lake bottom, carp have significantly damaged Utah Lake's ecosystem by destroying most of the natural vegetation that once grew on the lake bottom, Keleher has said. That vegetation once provided shelter for young June suckers and other native fish in the lake, as well as filtered and clarified sediment from the water.
Caleb Warnock can be reached at 443-3263 or [url "mailto:cwarnock@heraldextra.com."]cwarnock@heraldextra.com.[/url] This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it
Theirs is a family business -- and a Utah County tradition -- in jeopardy.
For four generations, Bill Loy Jr.'s family has made their living by fishing carp from Utah Lake and selling the fish for human and animal consumption.
Two weeks ago, Utah Lake officials announced that testing conducted as part of the June sucker recovery program found the carp had levels of PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, more than twice the threshold set by the Environmental Protection Agency.
The announcement has "pretty much destroyed" Loy's business, he said on Tuesday.
Since learning of the test results, companies in California, Iowa and other places that buy his fish have stopped their orders.
One buyer told Loy he was forced to sell at a loss a shipment already enroute as lobster bait. That buyer said he wouldn't buy any more fish from Utah Lake, Loy said.
For the next three weeks Loy is being paid by June sucker recovery program managers to harvest carp from Utah Lake as part of a time trial to see how many fish can be caught in a day.
But when that work is over, Loy said the best hope for his company is that recovery program managers will "keep him busy."
Recovery managers are hoping to start a large scale carp-removal operation in Utah Lake next year, and while no contract is being offered now, "Bill would certainly be someone that we turn to for his expertise and help in getting the job done because there is no one that knows the lake and carp like him," said Chris Keleher of the June sucker recovery program.
Buyers' refusal to take Loy's fish is probably unfair for two reasons, said Reed Harris of the June sucker recovery program.
First, the Environmental Protection Agency, which has no direct authority over fish consumption, uses a different, more stringent standard of PCB levels in fish, he said.
Under the standard used by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which does have authority over fish consumption, the carp in Utah Lake are safe to eat and can be legally sold, Harris said. The two agencies simply have conflicting data about how much PCB consumption can put a person at risk for cancer.
Second, carp in other areas of the nation may also be contaminated with similar levels of PCBs, but have not been tested, meaning that while buyers are refusing to take fish from Loy, the fish they are purchasing instead could have the same or higher levels of PCBs, Harris said.
Utah Lake carp were tested for contaminates for the first time this year as part of recovery research, Harris said. Managers ordered the fish tested because they had suspected the fish might contain high levels of mercury. They came back clean for mercury.
Students at BYU, led by professor Richard Kellems, have received a $50,000 grant from the June sucker recovery program to study ways in which 7 million adult carp in Utah Lake, weighing about 42 million pounds, can be used once they are removed, Keleher said.
Because PCBs contaminate only the fatty tissue of carp, BYU is developing a way to separate the protein in the fish from the PCB-containing oils by essentially cooking the fish, Keleher said. If the method can be used on a large scale, the uncontaminated protein could be sold as a supplement for livestock feed, allowing the carp removal process to help pay for itself.
Using the EPA guidelines, state officials are advising adults to eat no more than one 8-ounce serving of Utah Lake carp per month. Pregnant women, nursing mothers, women who may become pregnant and young children should avoid eating the fish entirely. This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A1.
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Officials host time trial for carp removal [url "javascript: void(0);"] PDF [/url] [url "javascript:void(0)"] | Print | [/url] [url "javascript: void(0);"] E-mail [/url]
CALEB WARNOCK - Daily Herald
Whether with a single pole or three commercial boats and a 100-foot seine, nothing is promised in fishing.
Utah Lake officials are holding a three-week time trial of sorts to see how many carp a crew of professional commercial fishermen can remove from Utah Lake.
In order to return Utah Lake to something resembling its natural condition, and save the June sucker, one of the most endangered fish in the world, 7.5 million adult carp must be removed from Utah Lake, said Reed Harris of the June sucker recovery program.
With an average of 120 days each year when it is safe or productive to fish, program managers must find a way to remove about 8,600 fish per day -- each weighing an average of 5.8 pounds -- in order to remove 1 million carp a year for seven years.
Results of the time trials will be used to determine whether professional fishers can do the job, and on Tuesday the results were not as good as had been hoped.
On his best day ever, Bill Loy Jr., who is a fourth-generation commercial carp fisher on Utah Lake, has removed 128,000 pounds of fish. But on Monday, the first day of the time trial, Loy's crews were able to remove only 6,000 pounds total in six net captures, most of that -- 4,000 pounds -- in the second net capture.
On Tuesday, with publicists, journalists, photographers and state officials watching from a nearby boat, Loy's luck was equally spotty. The first net capture resulted in a mere 70 pounds of carp. The second net capture came up with 3,000 pounds.
Loy has been contracted for 10 days of fishing over the next three weeks and is being paid 15 cents per pound, said Chris Keleher of the June sucker recovery program. Called a pilot project, results of the time trial will be used to determine what kind of effort would be needed to consistently remove about 8,600 fish a day for 120 days each year for seven years.
If at the end of the pilot project it appears that seine fishing -- using a net with floats along the top and weights along the bottom -- will not be an economically feasible method, other methods could be considered, including trawling and perhaps even poisoning, Harris said.
The process of removing carp requires hard physical labor. On Tuesday, Loy and three men boarded three 18-foot-long, 6-foot-wide steel boats and traveled about 30 minutes into Goshen Bay on Utah Lake's south end. Once there, crews put out a 100-foot-long, 10-foot-wide seine.
Working in water 3 feet deep and wearing chest waders, the men pulled the net into a circle and then slowly tightened the circle by pulling the net in foot by foot, throwing carp caught in the net into the circle while throwing out white bass, catfish and tamarisk branches.
Eventually several hundred carp were captured in a pocket at the center of the net. Loy's crew then pulled two boats side by side with the net pocket in the middle and scooped the fish into a boat. Fighting furiously, the fish flipped water and scales over a dozen feet, roiling dark mud in the process.
Once all the carp were removed from the net, the fish were taken 30 minutes back to the shore, where a gas-powered auger was used to load them into a waiting trash bin. Eventually the fish will be taken to the Elberta solid waste district to be turned into compost.
June sucker recovery program managers believe that removing as many as possible of the 7.5 million adult carp in the lake will decimate the population to a level that will allow the lake to begin returning to its natural condition.
Bottom feeders that spend all day rooting up the lake bottom, carp have significantly damaged Utah Lake's ecosystem by destroying most of the natural vegetation that once grew on the lake bottom, Keleher has said. That vegetation once provided shelter for young June suckers and other native fish in the lake, as well as filtered and clarified sediment from the water.
Caleb Warnock can be reached at 443-3263 or [url "mailto:cwarnock@heraldextra.com."]cwarnock@heraldextra.com.[/url] This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it
Theirs is a family business -- and a Utah County tradition -- in jeopardy.
For four generations, Bill Loy Jr.'s family has made their living by fishing carp from Utah Lake and selling the fish for human and animal consumption.
Two weeks ago, Utah Lake officials announced that testing conducted as part of the June sucker recovery program found the carp had levels of PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, more than twice the threshold set by the Environmental Protection Agency.
The announcement has "pretty much destroyed" Loy's business, he said on Tuesday.
Since learning of the test results, companies in California, Iowa and other places that buy his fish have stopped their orders.
One buyer told Loy he was forced to sell at a loss a shipment already enroute as lobster bait. That buyer said he wouldn't buy any more fish from Utah Lake, Loy said.
For the next three weeks Loy is being paid by June sucker recovery program managers to harvest carp from Utah Lake as part of a time trial to see how many fish can be caught in a day.
But when that work is over, Loy said the best hope for his company is that recovery program managers will "keep him busy."
Recovery managers are hoping to start a large scale carp-removal operation in Utah Lake next year, and while no contract is being offered now, "Bill would certainly be someone that we turn to for his expertise and help in getting the job done because there is no one that knows the lake and carp like him," said Chris Keleher of the June sucker recovery program.
Buyers' refusal to take Loy's fish is probably unfair for two reasons, said Reed Harris of the June sucker recovery program.
First, the Environmental Protection Agency, which has no direct authority over fish consumption, uses a different, more stringent standard of PCB levels in fish, he said.
Under the standard used by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which does have authority over fish consumption, the carp in Utah Lake are safe to eat and can be legally sold, Harris said. The two agencies simply have conflicting data about how much PCB consumption can put a person at risk for cancer.
Second, carp in other areas of the nation may also be contaminated with similar levels of PCBs, but have not been tested, meaning that while buyers are refusing to take fish from Loy, the fish they are purchasing instead could have the same or higher levels of PCBs, Harris said.
Utah Lake carp were tested for contaminates for the first time this year as part of recovery research, Harris said. Managers ordered the fish tested because they had suspected the fish might contain high levels of mercury. They came back clean for mercury.
Students at BYU, led by professor Richard Kellems, have received a $50,000 grant from the June sucker recovery program to study ways in which 7 million adult carp in Utah Lake, weighing about 42 million pounds, can be used once they are removed, Keleher said.
Because PCBs contaminate only the fatty tissue of carp, BYU is developing a way to separate the protein in the fish from the PCB-containing oils by essentially cooking the fish, Keleher said. If the method can be used on a large scale, the uncontaminated protein could be sold as a supplement for livestock feed, allowing the carp removal process to help pay for itself.
Using the EPA guidelines, state officials are advising adults to eat no more than one 8-ounce serving of Utah Lake carp per month. Pregnant women, nursing mothers, women who may become pregnant and young children should avoid eating the fish entirely. This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A1.
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] Seriously if they would put up a bounty i personally would make it my goal to kill as many carp to pay for the high price of gas! But also bows and fishing lines wouldnt be sufficient.They would have to let casting nets be used for the average person fishing for carp.They could also do like MET in florida.Have people sign up and keep track of how many fish they catch and then at the end of a month whoever gets the heaviest amount award them like .20 cents a pound.Like CP said greed is one attribute we all humans have![pirate] Heck if you have several hundred people targeting carp constantly and bringing in 100 pounds each each week or in a dday plus commercial fishermen that could be enough to help get rid of most of the carp.But personally i think there is just to much politics in the system to do anything logical.