There are many facets to that.
As far as Asian carp are concerned, I identified a back door that has largely been ignored by the public—and I suppose maybe by some policy-makers too—in that we're worried about the Chicago shipping canal, and rightly so, because it is abundant in the upper Mississippi River. I say “it”, but we're talking about a couple of species here. They are abundant in the upper Mississippi River and probably have already passed that canal, but not in sufficient numbers to establish a population. Keep in mind that the presence of a couple of individuals in an area does not guarantee that you have a population.
For snakehead fish, which I'll talk about later—if anybody wants to hear about it—at least one has been found in Lake Michigan. This does not mean that it's established there. We have no reason to believe that it's established there.
Piranhas are found every year in the Great Lakes, or nearly so, and we know they're not established, or at least there's good reason to believe that they're not established. We haven't found any juveniles. But there are indications of something. There are indications that people are dumping fish there.
As far as Asian carp is concerned, its live trade, I believe, is equally as important at the present time, or nearly so, as that shipping canal with its electric barrier. The fact is that we have trucks bringing live carp into Canada through Windsor. The fact is that I can go into Montreal, and I know a place where I can go in and buy live bighead carp, Asian carp, and they'll encourage me to leave with it alive.
I did a little operation with my students down there to check out what was going on in a market, which will not be named, but we're watching it. If I'm willing to pay for it, I can buy Asian carp and I can go all the way to the port of Montreal and, if I feel like it, dump them there. So that is an issue.
And it's not just Asian carp. That's the one you hear about the most, but this vector I'm talking about, live trade.... Actually, there's a multitude of vectors that are associated with the commercial importation of live organisms for various reasons. In this case, we're talking about for the food markets. For the snakehead fish, it's not only for the food markets, but also maybe through the illegal pet trade.
If you want to stop these species, you have to start regulating the importation of organisms.
A recent study done in the United States—I talked about numbers of species coming in—said that in terms of actual numbers of individual animals coming in, 1.1 billion freshwater fish enter the United States every year. I'm assuming that we also get numbers that are rather high, maybe not as high as those numbers, but of course if they're in the States they could be moved around as well, into Canada. But we probably receive a huge number too. I'm just not aware of what it is.
That also bothers me—that I'm not aware of what it is for Canada. I'm not really aware of how many species are coming across our borders. I have estimates for certain situations, like the one that was provided to me by Nick Mandrak, who had to cobble together a lot of information to get that estimate. So we're not aware of the degree of the problem.
I'm saying that you have to control the vectors to control not only the current recognized threat, but also the ones that are unrecognized and that could come here in the future or are coming in now.
I had my undergraduate students in one class do a project to look at the effects of the aquarium trade and of the biological supply houses, those companies that send into Canada material for teaching or biological research. They looked at the organisms that would be acclimated to Canada, based on where they come from. They used a climate-matching model to figure out which ones could establish if they escaped in sufficient numbers. We found that 5% not only can establish, but can also cause harm, judging by what they've done elsewhere. Five percent of thousands of species coming in is a rough estimate. It could be off by a few percentage points. I just know that it's not one I like to live with.
So there's a lack of information of the degree of the threat, but we have enough to know that live trade in all its forms is one that we've ignored for far too long. It includes the species you're interested in, or the group of species called Asian carp, which includes the bighead carp, the one that's probably the most dangerous, and silver carp and a couple of others. Bighead carp was the one that I could buy in Montreal. I also know that in previous years you could buy it in Toronto and in Ottawa and in various other places.