"The dreaded Northern Snakehead, a voracious predator dubbed the "Frankenfish" that can breathe out of water and wriggle across land, has invaded the Great Lakes, authorities said on Friday."

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=st...nt_snakehead_dc

There goes a lot of fishing industry. Is anybody smiling about this now?

Hi Amaranth
Nice to see you up here. A moderators job awaits
you (see my last post page1/2 new Board)

Shocking the 'Frankenfish' dead will not solve the problem. The longer a fish is, yes, the more liable they are to electric shock, but a lot more other fish will be killed as well. Then there is the 'wait' until other 'Frankenfish' are found.
Introducing freshwater 'Pike' might be the answer they will eat young Frankenfish, (and other types) But they are wonderful 'sport' for fishermen, when caught on the end of a rod.

I don't think they intend to kill the fish so much as stun them so they can be scooped up and "censused" and released back alive. Ae least that is my understanding.

Waiting might provide the fish with the opportunity to multiply and spread beyond any hope of containment.

From what I know of the Great Lakes, I'd expect there to be pike (muskelunge) in them. The trouble I see there is that Pike are less prolific than Snakeheads; at least that is my impression. From where I sit as a Biologist it doesn't look good. But what would I know? It's not like I'm a "real" scientist or anything; heck, I don't even know Morse Code, and it's been years since I carried a slide rule. I've even been known to change a subjet header from time to time; I should probably be guillotined for that. Just a good-for-nothing heretic, I am.

Don't tease me about a job just now. I'm just getting over a bout of ARF induced by medications. I'm sicker than the proverbial poisoned pup. Iatrogenic illness; gotta love it.

Nice, a frankinfish... I think God maid him...

The whole point Mary Wolstonecraft Shelley was making in her story "Dr. Frankenstein" (incidentally considered by many to be the first true Science Fiction novel; and written by a woman, fancy that) was that the excesses to which technology could be taken, in that case fabricating a human being and bringing it to life, were a clear and present danger against which humankind should take some precautions; but humans being human, fallible and flawed, would not refrain from attempting anything their technology presented as a possibility. M W Shelley was pleading for the exercise of ethical responsibility in the application of technology.

Even now we are faced with the explosion of technology that presents us with a vast array of possibilities; we cannot help but explore them. We can clone, and we will. We can modify the genomes of plants, and eventually animals, and we will. We have shown that we have the potential to slip the surly bonds of Earth and rise to the cold, silent halls of space, and we will. We'll probably soon have regular runs for tourists. These things we can do would have seemed miraculous and inexplicable to Mary Shelley and her compatriots. They might have attributed them to the will of a deity. Yet they are nothing more than acts of humans.

Snakeheads evolved. No one and no thing made them, except other snakeheads and snakehead-like fish and the process of mutation on their ancestors.

Let's stay polite. This is a Science forum.