Fish Tale

By Jeffrey Kluger Monday, July 29, 2002
    • ALEX DORGAN-ROSS/AP

    Snakeheads, which look harmless as fingerlings, are expanding their range

    Fifteen minutes of fame might not be much — unless you're a fish, in which case that flash of notoriety is more than you had a right to expect in the first place. When it comes to the northern snakehead — the reputed land-walking, air-breathing, migrating Chinese predator that caused such panic when it turned up in a Crofton, Md., pond last month — the story may be even harder to kill than the fish. Faced with snakehead sightings in six other states, the Bush Administration — its hands arguably full with the war on terrorism, the Wall Street meltdown and the ongoing parade of corporate scandals — took time out last week to handle the slippery creature, dispatching Interior Secretary Gail Norton to announce plans to seal the porous U.S. borders against the importation of any more snakeheads. "These fish are like something from a bad horror movie," Norton intoned darkly last Tuesday.

    But are they? Federal breathlessness notwithstanding, plenty of fish experts are wondering what all the fuss is about. Is it the snakehead that's out of control or simply the hype? And in making an example of this one nonindigenous species, is the government letting other, more menacing ones walk? Says Paul Shafland, a director with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission: "This has been more Hollywood than science."

    No one denies that the snakehead has flourished in the little Crofton pond. It was only two years ago that a private owner dumped a pair there, and in that time, nearly 100 spawn have been spotted, with plenty more probably lurking in the mud.

    If so, say the alarmists, we've got cause to worry. The snakehead can exceed 3 ft. in length and will eat pretty much anything that can fit into its jaws. What's more, the Patuxent River is only 75 yds. away, and the fish — with an air sac in its digestive system that allows it to absorb oxygen, and the ability to flop its way across small stretches of muddy land — could soon wriggle into the nation's waterways.

    Snakeheads, however, are really nothing more than common swamp fish. In Southeast Asia, where they originate, they live in irrigation ditches and rice paddies, thriving there until the dry season, when their pools shrink and they squirm along to the next pocket of water. Such clumsy locomotion does not lend itself to wanderlust, and snakeheads in a good pond are likely to stay there forever. "Snakeheads are extremely lazy and sedentary," says Hawaii biologist Ron Weidenbach.


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    Nor do they much care for air — at least not the way they're said to. Reports had it that they can live on land for up to three days, but the best they usually seem to manage is several hours under wet burlap in open markets where they're sold for their flesh. On dry land under a sunny sky, they fricassee fast. And while snakeheads have indeed popped up in half a dozen states besides Maryland, they've done so in modest numbers. Florida reported a single pair of river snakeheads near Orlando in 2001; Massachusetts encountered a single specimen last October. Florida has a population that appears to be breeding, but only in Hawaii, where the fish is isolated on the island of Oahu, does it truly thrive, and there it's aggressively fished. "Better than bass," says an enthusiastic angler.

    So what's all the hand wringing about? It might just be a too little, too late effort to do something about the larger problem of nonnative species. The measure Norton invoked last week, the Lacey Act, authorizes the Secretary of the Interior to identify "injurious wildlife." The problem is, when you're looking for those things, it's hard to know where to begin. There are 200,000 species of organisms (excluding bacteria and protozoa) in the U.S., and at least 7,000 of them were introduced artificially. The coyote didn't start here, nor did the hog, the sparrow, the starling, the rat or the pigeon. And though some alien species — such as horses, cattle and sheep — are important parts of our culture and commerce, many are pests. "Introduced species are one of the principal causes of endangerment for half of endangered species," says Daniel Simberloff, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Tennessee. Cracking down on at least one invader that has yet to get a real finhold in the ecosystem may not be much, but it's better than letting it through.

    The zero-tolerance approach the federal and state governments seem to be taking does not bode well for the snakehead. Maryland officials continue to puzzle out how best to clear the Crofton pond (poison, electrocution and concussion bombs are current options), and Washington is preparing to impose prison terms of up to six months and fines of up to $10,000 for any future snakehead importers. "Predators of this kind have historically been among our most damaging species," says Simberloff. In most cases, unfortunately, that damage may be impossible to undo.