Shedd Aquarium Displaying Asian Carp
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Now welcoming visitors at the Shedd Aquarium are three big grey slow moving Carp, important because nobody wants them around, in the Great Lakes anyway.
Shedd Aquarium Displaying Invasive Carp
The ones on display now are Big Head Carp, and they're big
"These are fish that can be one or two feet long and they can be 10 pounds and they can leap 10 feet in the air," said senior research biologist Dr Phillip Willlink. "They have a bad habit of doing this when boats come by. They get scared by the engines or something, we don't know exactly why, so they have been known leap up in the air, they can do so in large numbers and they have been known to hit people and actually hurt people."
They're part of a group called Asian Carp which is something of a problem for Willlink.
"Fish biologists hate the term 'Asian Carp,' because in the world, there are twenty or thirty species of carp and they are all from Asia," said Willink. "Now, when you talk to a fish biologist about Asian Carp, we have no idea what you are talking about.
Dr Willink says it's the Big Head and Silver Carp biologists are trying to keep out of Michigan and the other Great Lakes with electric fish fences and calls for fishermen to wash out their boats, bait buckets and bilges before they they move from any body of water into Lake Michigan.
