Red-bellied piranha discovered in BC lake by angler
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Red-bellied piranha discovered in BC lake by angler
by Megan Trudeau, KamloopsBCNOW, September 28 2019
A fisherman reeled in quite the surprise this week while out on Westwood Lake near Nanaimo [British Columbia, Canada].
According to the Conservation Officer Service (COS), a red-bellied piranha was caught in the lake.
Piranha are tropical fish that are not able to survive in our winter climate, however it is a popular aquarium fish.
Conservation officers said that this was likely a case of an unwanted pet being released into the lake.
It’s also not the first time this year that someone has caught a piranha in the same lake. Another piranha was caught earlier this summer.
The COS would like to remind the public that introducing an aquatic invasive species can have harmful impacts, including threatening native fish, ecosystems and other species.
It is also illegal, and a conviction for a first offence of the movement of aquatic invasive species could net a fine of up to $100,000 and/or a prison term of up to one year.
If you suspect your catch is a new introduction, or if you have any information on this incident, please call the Report All Poachers and Polluters (RAPP) hotline at 1-877-952-7277 (RAPP).
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Wait a second. Piranha have feelings too. They need to be fed, so who volunteers to go swimming in that lake?
For the information of you Americans, 2.54 centimeters equals one inch, so the fish is only about 9 inches long, but then even a small piranha can be pretty vicious and tear your skin off. You can be especially concerned if you ever saw this movie:
Catching 2 in the same Northern lake is cause for some concern, but they are not dangerous unless they are hungry and in very large groups.
In an aquarium with similarly sized rough fish like Chichlids &Oscars they are timid.
Similarly if they get large enough, they will ignore guppies, tetras, neons, tiger Barbs and zebra danios which are too small and too fast to catch.
Aquarium piranhas quickly learn who feeds them what - they will eat anything ie, beef, pork, chicken etc,
Another asshole who released a non-native species into a lake!
Yeah, the perfect example of that is when someone released rabbits in Australia, where there were no natural predators for them.
And fox, cats, and cane toads.
In the US the Everglades are being overrun and the natural inhabitants are being killed off at an alarming rate by the Burmese python. Add to that snakehead fish, Asian carp etc etc.
Some people and governments are fucking idiots.
Textbook example. We learned about that one as children. Last year when I was in Florida I learned about the Melaleuca tree. Florida spends large amounts of money and resources each year to remove them. Believe it or not they were introduced long ago in a deliberate attempt to destroy the Everglades. It was introduced by Citrus growers who wanted to develop the area and dry out the "swamp", which these trees do. Today they burn them a little at a time.
In California they used Eucalyptus around the SF Bay area to dry out the swamps and lowlands all around the bay.
Had the Japanese ever attacked San Francisco or Marin County, all of the gun emplacements were marked by
Eucalyptus trees. The Presidio and Angels island are covered with them as were the hills of residential neighborhoods in
Oakland where the burning Eucalyptus trees were exploding into little sailing leaves coated with their burning sap during the great Oakland firestorm of 1991
Thank you John McLaren & the City of SF for that one.
We have come to value national treasures like the Bay area & the Everglades. It is something the nation is unified about.
Some invasive species have been introduced with good intentions-- but with a lack of knowledge. Sometimes when there's excessive growth of some noxious plant that is a real problem, scientists find a predator to introduce that will control it. But occasionally the predator will also kill off desirable species as well-- or have other really bad traits.
And the same goes for introducing predators in an attempt to control undesitrable animals--- sometimes other useful animals are attacked.
And sometimes killing off what were thought to be harmful aanimals upsets an entire natural cycle.
Throw a pebble in a still pond...
A good analogy. Disturb the environment and the "ripples" go far and wide.
Some invasive species have been introduced with good intentions-- but with a lack of knowledge.
For example, the deliberate introduction of some types of Asian Carp:
Invasion USA: Asian Carp Invaders Have Taken the Mississippi, Are the Great Lakes Next?
Introduced to control weeds and parasites in aquaculture, Asian carp have been crowding out native fish, compromising water quality and killing off sensitive species
Introduced in the southeast to help control weeds and parasites in aquaculture operations, these fish soon spread up the Mississippi River system where they have been crowding out native fish populations not used to competing with such aggressive invaders.
Asian carp are hardy, lay hundreds of thousands of eggs at a time and spread into new habitat quickly and easily. To wit, they can jump over barriers such as low dams.
At least carp can be used to make gefilte fish.
I wonder if they can use this kind of Carp?
Because there are plenty of them (too many!)
Midwest battles to keep invasive Asian carp out of the Great Lakes
I get a blank page - don't know what you posted.
That's the title of the video I embeded (from YouTube). But there are other similar videos . You can search for something like "invasive species , Asian Carp, Great Lakes". They are large and aggressive....they can be seen jumping pretty high...in the rivers...
I couldn't play the video, but I read the transcript from the PBS video here: