Likes: 
Thanks: 
HaHa: 
Adam Martin- PLEASE READ and comment, species specific Asian carp pesticide developed
Reply With QuoteI have seen that article floating around the past couple of days. I can give you my personal take on it, but it does not necessarily represent the views of KDFWR. These situations are legally tricky so this is just Adam Martin talking, not Adam Martin KDFWR biologist. I have never spoken with that startup and I do not know the details about their formulation or how effective it is.
From their website, it seems they are being pretty protective of the details. From what I can gather, there may be some problems with it.
problem (1). It claims to be selective. It doesnt mention the mechanism for this, but it looks like "only the fish that eat like asian carp should be affected" according to their website. This makes me think the only thing that's selective about it is that the particles are small and they probably are semi buoyant. The "fish that eat like asian carp" category includes a huge range of fish including, shad, buffalo, paddlefish, and juvenile fish of all species. This could be somewhat mitigated if you had an area that was exclusively filled with carp, but you probably wouldnt know for sure until the fish started popping up dead, at which point it would be too late.
Problem (2) I dont know what pesticide they are using, so I cant speculate about how it would degrade in the environment, but that is obviously a major concern when youre talking about waterways people swim, boat, fish, and collect drinking water from.
On their website they compare and contrast it with the poison pills being researched by USGS. The USGS pills are selective because of a coating that breaks down in the presence of certain enzymes which have been observed in higher concentrations in the guts of silver carp. The idea being that if a non target fish eats the pills, they wont have enough of the necessary enzymes to break it down and activate the poison. I don't know any details on the current progress of that research, but I know there were concerns about differences in the concentrations of those unique enzymes between different populations of carp and at different times of the year. Its not the kind of thing you want to put in the water without adequate testing. Additionally the cost is quite high for the USGS pills.
The design by that startup seems to cost less, but I'm not aware of any agency or state pursuing that idea because of the problems listed above about being somewhat non-selective and unproven.
I am not encouraging or discouraging anyone from investing/contributing. I will not personally be contributing.
Hope this helps and that I didn't sound too much like a lawyer
Originally Posted by Northforker
