Response of Bighead Carp and Silver Carp to Repeated Water Gun Operation in an Enclosed Shallow Pond

Abstract

The Bighead Carp Hypophthalmichthys nobilis and Silver Carp H. molitrix are nonnative species that pose a threat to Great Lakes ecosystems should they advance into those areas. Thus, technologies to impede Asian carp movement into the Great Lakes are needed; one potential technology is the seismic water gun. We evaluated the efficacy of a water gun array as a behavioral deterrent to the movement of acoustic-tagged Bighead Carp and Silver Carp in an experimental pond. Behavioral responses were evaluated by using four metrics: (1) fish distance from the water guns (D); (2) spatial area of the fish's utilization distribution (UD); (3) persistence velocity (V_p); and (4) number of times a fish transited the water gun array. For both species, average D increased by 10 m during the firing period relative to the pre-firing period. During the firing period, the spatial area of use within the pond decreased. Carp were located throughout the pond during the pre-firing period but were concentrated in the north end of the pond during the firing period, thus reducing their UDs by roughly 50%. Overall, V_p decreased during the firing period relative to the pre-firing period, as fish movement became more tortuous and confined, suggesting that the firing of the guns elicited a change in carp behavior. The water gun array was partially successful at impeding carp movement, but some fish did transit the array. Bighead Carp moved past the guns a total of 78 times during the pre-firing period and 15 times during the firing period; Silver Carp moved past the guns 96 times during the pre-firing period and 13 times during the firing period. Although the water guns did alter carp behavior, causing the fish to move away from the guns, this method was not 100% effective as a passage deterrent.

Received August 6, 2014; accepted January 16, 2015

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank Nicholas M. Swyers for his work in preparing the telemetry system for data collection and in postprocessing of data to derive the fish locations; Thomas Batt for surveying the locations of hydrophones and other features within the pond and developing a digital elevation model of the pond for our use; Kim Fredricks, Colin Smith, and Justin Smerud for helping in the design of the external tag apparatus; and Theresa Liedtke for directing the preliminary tagging procedures. Comments provided by three anonymous reviewers, Kevin Richards, and Carolyn Griswold improved the manuscript. All fish handling, care, and experimental procedures used were reviewed and approved by the UMESC Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (Protocol AEH-12-PPT-AC-01). Funding for this work was provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. Any use of trade, firm, or product names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.