I mentioned on my last post that my last job was removing invasive carp from the Mississippi river. While what we were doing was good and has made a measurable difference, It pales in comparison to the difference that could be made if commercial fishermen took up the gauntlet of helping remove them en masse.
One of the best things for encouraging the removal of an invasive species is to develop a market for it to encourage people to take them out of the wild. In the case of the carp, there was no market for them so fishermen wouldn't take them as they'd make no money from it. My job partnered with someone who was trying to make a market for them. We gave him the fish we caught and he turned them into bait and fertilizer. We couldn't accept payment for them due to working on a grant but if fishermen could sell carp to fertilizer or bait companies, they would be more likely to keep the carp instead of tossing them back.
Recently, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources started an attempt to develop a market for carp by renaming them to copi. The idea is that the word "carp" has a negative stigma which discourages people from eating them, so rebranding the meat to "copi" can open up a new market. The fish are eaten in their native rage in Asia and from what I've heard are quite good (I wanted to try some but never got the chance) so the rename would ideally help with getting people to try their meat. This has apparently worked in previous cases such as renaming the Patagonian tooth fish to the Chilean sea bass. Will it work? I haven't seen any data on whether or not its working and it may be too soon to draw conclusions, but hopefully this will help reduce the invasive carp populations and may be a model usable for other invasive species.
Check this website for more information and places where you can buy copi. If I ever get the chance to buy some, I will. choosecopi.com
