According to an article from the Associated Press, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service discovered a “22-inch immature specimen” of Asian Carp “among tens of thousands of dead fish identified in a fish kill operation in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, about 40 miles from Lake Michigan.”
The fish kill operation took place while an electric barrier, which was erected to prevent Asian Carp from reaching the Great Lakes, was down for maintenance. More than 2,000 gallons of a poison called rotenone was dumped into the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. This resulted in “ten of thousands of other species of fish, from gizzard shad to drum” to float to the surface of the waterway. The kill operation “began Wednesday and was expected to last until Sunday.” At the end of the operation, an expected 200,000 pounds of dead fish will be removed and sent to a landfill.
Stay tuned to the Illinois Environmental Law Blog for more news and developments.
