Quantcast
Channel: Restoration and Resilience » Invasive Species
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 4

Cashing In on Invasive Fish: Illinois Firm Secures Big Contract to Ship Asian Carp from the Mississippi River to Mainland China

0
0

By Seyi Fayanju

Getting a handle on a fishy foe: A captured silver carp eyes the camera of a researcher from Michigan Sea Grant in this photo taken last summer (Source: Flickr (michiganseagrant))

You may recall how we discussed potential markets for invasive carp from Louisiana’s wetlands in a post last July. Since then, we haven’t seen much traction on the topic of Asian carp in Louisiana, but further upriver in Illinois, some enterprising minds have been busy minting money from this Mississippi River menace.

Last Thursday, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published an article by Jim Gallagher about a recent deal between an Illinois carp processor, Big River Fish Corp., and Chinese grocers and food companies for 30 million pounds of “Upper Mississippi wild-caught carp.” Since an average Asian carp weighs 30 pounds and costs approximately $8 wholesale, this deal is roughly equivalent to $8 million dollars in exchange for 1 million flash-frozen fish.

Assisted by a $2 million grant from the state of Illinois, the Midwestern company plans to expand its current home – a converted chicken slaughterhouse – from 12,000 square feet to 80,000 square feet over the next few months. In addition, the firm plans on increasing its staff by at least five-fold: from 12 employees at present to more than 60 employees in the near future.

Besides boosting its bottom line, Big River Fish Corp. also will be providing new opportunities for dozens of local fisherman to serve as suppliers of Asian carp. Many of these anglers previously hooked bass, catfish and sauger in the rich waters near the juncture of the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers, but those native species couldn’t compete against voracious bighead and silver carp from abroad. By consuming so much of the plankton at the base of the river’s food chain, Asian carp sharply reduced the food supply for commercially valuable domestic species in the Mississippi and its tributaries. Now, because of increased consumer demand for carp in the Chinese market, men and women from the Upper Mississippi River Valley will again be able to earn a living from fishing. At the same time, they will be helping their local ecosystem by controlling the population of an invasive pest that has proved difficult to eradicate.

This is the sort of story that we love on Restoration and Resilience. Far from pie-in-the-sky discussions about theoretical jobs from invasive species control, we are now seeing tangible evidence of entrepreneurs “turning lemons into lemonade” in the Land of Lincoln. These market-based solutions to environmental problems are not just applicable in Illinois. They can and should be taking root further downstream in the Mississippi River Delta.

Louisiana has the infrastructure and the workforce to compete in carp processing, but where’s the action and initiative? Couldn’t the success of Big River Fish Corp. be replicated on a larger scale in Louisiana and provide huge benefits for the economy and environment of its wetland parishes?

We hope that the Mississippi River Delta’s fish processing firms will catch this wave before it’s too late. In the interim, keep us posted if you hear of any local companies achieving success in selling Asian carp from coastal Louisiana.


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 4

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images