Snakehead Fish Cause Concern In Waters

April 23, 2009

Release from: Bob Barnard
MyFOXDC.com

FORT WASHINGTON, Md. - A certain type of fish is causing concern in local waterways. They call it the snakehead. This week, a fisherman caught a big one, confirming what officials already knew. The invasive species still poses a real threat to the ecosystem.

Rob Lewis made the big catch at Swan Creek in Fort Washington on Thursday night. The Alexandria angler caught one of the largest Northern Snakeheads on record.

"That's where they get their name, Snakehead-- cause it almost looks like a python, Burmese-type feel," said Lewis. "It feels like a snake as well."

The adult female was nearly 30 inches long. She's a telling example of how quickly the non-native Snakehead is adapting to the Washington area's waterways.

"If we had our drothers we wouldn't have it," said Fisheries Biologist John Odenkirk. "But now that it's here, we can at least study and learn from it and keep it contained. That's what we'd like to do."

Odenkirk is running a Snakehead study for the Virginia Department of Natural Resources.

"We've been killing the fish to learn what they're eating, how old they are," Odenkirk explained. "We extract a bone from their head called an odalith and look at that under a microscope and that's like looking at rings on a tree. That tells us how old the fish are. And we call that the ultimate work up. We try to get as much data as we can from that sacrificed fish."

Smuggled from China, the Snakehead was first documented in tehse parts five years ago. The fish are growing in number, size and strength.

A Maryland Inland Fisheries official calls the Northern Snakehead a robust fish that can thrive in water that's shallow and dirty. Its Potomac River habitat is growing larger every year—we're talking a 70-mile swath from Great Falls to Colonial Beach and every Maryland, Virginia, and D.C. tributary in between.

Experts say if the population keeps growing as it has been for another 10 to 20 years, something has to give.

Lewis has concerns for the ecosystem as well.

"If they keep growing at the rate they're growing, I mean six inches, seven inches a year, without doing anything-- then I think we're going to have problems later. Big problems."