Fish Sampling Effort Winds Down on Little Calumet River: No Bighead or Silver carp collected

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 24, 2010

Chris McCloud 217‐299‐7128
Ashley Spratt 612‐247‐2976

Chicago, IL- The Asian Carp Regional Coordinating Committee (RCC) is nearing completion of a sampling and data collection operation on the Little Calumet River in South Chicago on Tuesday.

Fisheries biologists from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and other supporting agencies collected just over 100,000 pounds fish during the week long operation. Over 40 species of fish were collected though no Bighead or Silver Asian carps have found.

"This mission is meeting its objectives. We now know that if Asian carp exist near T.J. Obrien Lock, they exist in very low numbers. We also know the overall fish abundance in this stretch of the river. The data collected during this operation will be critically important to informing our management and monitoring response going forward," said RCC Co-Chairman John Rogner.

A five mile safety zone established by the U.S. Coast Guard remains in effect, restricting maritime traffic from mile marker 321.5 to 326.5 to all commercial and recreational vessel traffic until the Coast Guard Captain of the Port rescinds the safety zone following the completion of fish recovery operations sometime in the next 1-2 days.

The public should NOT swim or recreate in the treatment area, or catch or eat fish found in the treatment area until signs around the treatment area have been removed.

Photographs and b-roll footage from the operation are available on the U.S. Coast Guard's Visual Information Gallery at http://cgvi.uscg.mil/media/main.php.