“Captain Nate” Wallick skis across the Illinois River, tow rope in one hand, net in the other. As the boat churns the water, silver carp erupt into the air around him.
His mission: catch the notoriously skittish airborne fish mid-flight and slam-dunk them through a basketball hoop and into a bucket below. The Peoria-based charter boat captain calls this unnatural conflagration of sports “skarping,” and it’s bringing attention to a problem that’s anything but a game: the threat of invasive carp.
It’s time to pick your Milwaukee favorites for the year!
Invasive carp aren’t just a downstream story to Milwaukee; they’re an existential threat to the ecology of its rivers and the Great Lakes beyond. These fish, 2-3 feet long, bulldoze ecosystems, breeding by the millions, consuming native aquatic plants and algae, outcompeting native fish like walleye and perch, and unraveling the economic and environmental fabric of the waters they inhabit.
The carp were brought to the U.S. in the early 1960s to clean polluted waterways and sewage treatment lagoons. They eventually escaped into the Mississippi River system and over decades have been working their way closer to the Great Lakes. To halt the advance, experts identified a choke point on the Illinois River in Joliet as the best place to hold the line and defend the Great Lakes and their $6 trillion economic and immeasurable environmental value.
A $1.15 billion barrier called the Brandon Road Lock and Dam designed to do that – once and for all, officials believe – has been decades in the making. The project would install electric barriers, bubble screens and sound walls to block and repel carp while still allowing for shipping in a critical conduit between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi systems. But after years of delays, Illinois’ hesitations over federal funding earlier this year left the project in limbo.
So far, no invasive carp have been caught in Milwaukee, but DNA traces warn they may be swimming closer, and scientists know the clock is ticking: Without intervention, it’s not a matter of if but when carp arrive. With a breach of Lake Michigan, they could destroy the Great Lakes’ commercial and recreational economy, choking waterfront tourism and spiking water treatment costs.
While Captain Nate’s skarping is more recreation than activism, Wallick does use the skarped carp as fertilizer – a more common practice in the last decade to make use of these fish.
Others have suggested using carp as pet food, while braver souls cook them as a delicacy for humans. (“If you can’t beat ’em, eat ’em,” the Wildlife Management Institute quipped.)
None of these remedies have dented the carp populations in the Mississippi system. In waterways like the Illinois, the ecosystems have not recovered – silver carp still rocket through the shallows and outcompete native fish, disrupting the food web by eating zooplankton and plants. Meanwhile, river tourism declines as people fear being smacked by carp. “When you’re doing 15 miles an hour in a boat and those fish jump out with their head made of solid bone, it’s scary,” says Wallick.
For the Great Lakes, prevention isn’t just worth a pound of cure; it’s the only option on the table. This spring, Illinois finally moved forward, securing the final land deal to start construction on the Brandon Road project. For Milwaukee, with carp just 50 miles from Lake Michigan and their DNA already lurking within the Milwaukee River, the project can’t move fast enough.
