- Don’t worry, they’re not looking to put a new spin on the phrase ‘sleeping with the fishes.’
It’s been a bit rainy in Australia recently. So much so, in fact, that some areas of the country are seeing “once in a century” floods.
The rushing waters have caused plenty of damage to both infrastructure and people. But there’s also another unpleasant side effect.
They’re leaving huge hordes of fish dead and rotting on dry land.
As an example, Hamilton Beach in southwestern Australia — some 250 miles from Perth — was recently covered in thousands of decaying freshwater carp. Not only are dead fish messy and smelly, but they also highlight another problem.
The carp don’t belong in Australia. They’re an introduced, invasive species that’s breeding uncontrollably and damaging Australia’s native ecosystems.
With the carp now rotting on the beaches, Australians have reached the end of their rope. They want to get rid of the fish, and they have a plan for it.
They want to give every single carp herpes.
‘Carp are Super-Abundant’
Now, we understand that’s a bizarre idea, so let’s take a step back and start from the beginning.
Carp were first introduced to Australia in 1859. These tasty fish are valuable as food and can also be pretty and ornamental — the Japanese koi, for example, are carp.
The fish were first confined to the pools of fish farms and all was good. But, in the 1960s, a series of accidents released carp into southern Australia’s rivers.
Since then, they’ve been feeding and breeding voraciously. Some researchers estimate that they now comprise 90% of all biomass in the southeastern Murray-Darling basin.
Basically, if you put all biological matter of the area into a huge bucket, only a tiny top layer would consist of other lifeforms. The rest would be carp.
“Carp are super-abundant right now because floods give them access to floodplain habitats. There, each large female can spawn millions of eggs and the young have high survival rates,” experts from Charles Sturt University wrote.
That’s somewhat of a problem. The carp devour everything edible in the rivers, lowering water quality and starving local animals to death.
They are a real problem and something needs to be done. In the past, Australian authorities have tried everything from poisons to electricity and high explosives — but nothing has worked.
A Deadly Virus
In the end, somebody came up with an idea. Since the carp seemingly can’t stop banging, why not infect them with a lethal STD?
Enter cyprinid herpesvirus 3 — carp herpes.
On paper, giving carp herpes sounds like a fantastic plan. The virus is extremely lethal and effectively kills off carp.
After a carp catches herpes, the virus will incubate for about one to two weeks. Once the first symptoms appear — including red gills, excessive mucus secretion, and patches of necrotic skin — it’s over for the fish.
It will be dead within 24 hours.
“But what about other fish?” you ask. That’s why the herpes plan is so ingenious — the virus doesn’t care about fish.
The carp herpesvirus targets carp, and carp exclusively. No Australian native fish species is closely related to carp, so the virus doesn’t give a hoot or a holler about them.
According to government estimates, the virus could wipe out up to 80% of Australia’s carp population.
It kills quickly, it kills efficiently, and it only kills carp. A perfect weapon of mass destruction against the invading fish.
Uncertain Consequences
So, what’s Australia waiting for? Just crack a few herpes vials into a carp spawning mass and watch the problem solve itself!
If only it was that simple. Australia has been planning to use the virus since 2016, but there are some problems.
The biggest one is the ridiculous number of carp in Australia’s rivers. If they’re a problem alive, they’d also be a problem dead.
After all, they don’t just disappear after they die. The piles upon piles of dead carp would rot in the water, ruining water quality and potentially killing everything else living in it.
So, somebody has to remove the carp once they start dying off. But who’s going to do it — and more importantly, who’s going to pay for it?
Finally, the carp might develop immunity to the virus. Sure, 80% of them could die off, but the survivors would only emerge stronger and get to breeding again.
And if the virus no longer works, what will Australians do then?
It’s a classic catch-22 situation. You’re damned if you do it, you’re damned if you don’t.
And meanwhile, the floods just keep washing more carp ashore.
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