There had been previous rebranding attempts for the fish by different states-“Kentucky tuna” didn’t stick-but other successful renaming schemes gave them hope.
The association between Asian carp and environmental menace was too strong besides, when most Americans hear “carp,” they think of unappetizing bottom-feeders. Last year, a silver carp made it all the way to Lake Calumet, just 7 miles from Lake Michigan.
The threat is so dire that the government has spent billions erecting massive electric dams to zap the fish back downstream. If they reach the Great Lakes, they could destroy their ecosystem. In many rivers, the water is so crowded with these creatures that other fish have evolved to be skinnier or oddly-shaped to squeeze past them. Copi eat plankton and algae-so much plankton that other fish get bupkes and native populations dwindle or die out entirely. Although it took decades for copi to arrive in Illinois, once it was there, it quickly upended the ecological balance. By 2010, Illinois had hired him to build up a program to deal with the invasive creature. “I was traveling around the world talking about these critters,” he says. After it arrived on his home turf, Irons did everything he could to understand them. These fish are, above all else, incredibly adaptable and hardy. Perhaps they would have remained just that, had they not escaped during floods, entered local waterways, and then absolutely dominated every other creature. At the time, they were seen as a green alternative to chemicals. Ecologist Kevin Irons is at the center of a long-gestating campaign to give the fish a reputational makeover thorough enough to whet American appetites.Ĭopi has been in waterways in parts of the southern United States since the 1970s, when environmentally-minded aquaculturists imported them to clean catfish retainer ponds.
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