- Hi, my name's Jasmine.
I'm a member of the education team
here at Toronto and Region Conservation Authority.
Recently, I got the chance to go out
with the Aquatic Monitoring Team here
and learn more about some of the work that they're doing
to survey for invasive Asian grass carp.
So, there are four species of invasive Asian carp.
One of them, which is the Asian grass carp,
is the one that poses the most immediate threat
to Lake Ontario and to our surrounding Great Lakes Region.
So, if Asian grass carp
were to become established here in Lake Ontario,
that could cause a lot of problems
for the ecosystem we have here
and also the native fish that live here.
The thing that Asian grass carp do is that they eat a lot.
They're very voracious eaters.
And as they're eating all this plant material,
that takes away food from other native fish species
and it also gives them less spaces to hide from predators.
As they're eating all of this food,
they're releasing a lot of nutrient rich waste,
which can cause algal blooms
and reduce the levels of oxygen in the water.
As well, when they're forging for plant material
at the bottom of the Lake,
they can cause the water to become a lot more turbid,
which can actually make it difficult
for native fish species' eggs to develop.
- Hi, my name is Matthew Fraschetti.
I'm a crew leader with the Quantic Monitoring
and Management Team.
In 2015, Toronto and Region Conservation Authority
environmental monitoring crews found the Asian grass carp
in the Tommy Thompson area and Toronto Islands.
Since 2016, Toronto and Region Conservation Authority
has been working in partnership with Fisheries
and Oceans Canada to do Asian carp monitoring.
It's a big effort in order to keep Asian carp
from establishing within the Toronto area.
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- Hi, I'm Kirstin Pautler,
I'm with the Aquatic Monitoring Team
with Toronto Region Conservation Authority
and I'm one of the field assistants.
The main ways we're looking
for these Asian carp right now is using various nets.
So we've got, as you'll see today, some fyke nets,
some trammel nets, and some trap nets.
The main purpose of these nets
is to catch any fish that are swimming through the water,
funnel them into a net,
and then we will come back the next day
after setting them and collect the fish.
Okay, So we have a trammel net that deployed behind us.
(water splashing)
It's one of the various methods we're using
in our Asian carp monitoring this season.
So, the way this works, you'll launch a mushroom anchor
on one end of the shore,
and then slowly let out the trammel net,
which has various different holes
in the net to catch different types of fish.
The idea is that we'll collect it or connected it
on the other side of the shore and make kind of a horseshoe.
And, any fish that's trapped inside
or scared near it will kind of swim into it
and get stuck in the net.
So, this is the trap net that we have here.
(wind blowing)
So the point of this trap net is to collect and fish species
that are kind of hanging around in the water.
So, what happens is they'll be swimming along
and they'll reach this lead line
that's going through the water column.
And then, it'll cause them to kind of be confused
and swim up further into the trap.
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And so, they'll all collect there
and then we go in and fish them out and see what we got.
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- So, this is our fyke net here.
We'll come in here and we'll pick it up from both ends.
And then, we'll kind of shake the net down
to make sure that all the fish
are collected at the bottom where that last float is.
And then yeah, we'll take their length, weight, and ID them.
And then, we'll return them back to the Lake
as long as they're not an Asian carp.
(ethereal music)
- 87.
(ethereal music)
(wind blowing)
So, luckily when I went out
with the Aquatic Monitoring Team,
we did not find any grass carp
or any other Asian carp species.
The monitoring work that we're doing here
is really important, but we need your help too.
You can check out our fact sheet
which should be linked in the description below.
And, that has a lot of tips
on how to identify our Asian carp species,
specifically our Asian grass carp,
and how to differentiate it
from the other native fish species that we have here.
If you ever do encounter
or think you have encountered an Asian grass carp,
then, you can check out our fact sheet for what to do next.
(bells chiming)