Eating Aliens: One Man's Adventures Hunting Invasive Animal Species

by Jackson Landers

  Anoles, a major food for the spiny-tails, were in shorter supply than they’d been last year. There are two species: the tiny brown, invasive Cuban anoles (Anolis sagrei) and the larger, native, green Carolina anoles (Anolis carolinensis). More spiny-tailed iguanas means fewer anoles, and thus more of the insects on the anoles’ menu. I noticed that mosquito numbers were way up, although I don’t know for sure that the reduction in anoles was why.

  There were definitely a lot more big iguanas than I’d seen earlier, however — no doubt the result of a year of ineffective hunting and trapping before George was back in charge. The large females were a particular concern. Things would get worse before they got better, George said. Even though he’d been taking out the big females as fast as he could, their high numbers in the spring meant clutches of eggs were waiting to hatch in August, at which time there’d be a population boom.

  The situation underscored to me what a difference one person can make. That George had singlehandedly changed the ecology of the island was incredible. I’d been there the year before, after he’d reduced the iguana population by sixteen thousand, and now I could see what happened after his work had been interrupted. One knowledgeable and dedicated hunter invested in the community and in the ecosystem can be more effective than any study or a big-budget federal agency. If people let down their guard, it takes just a few seasons for a species to rebound.

  I doubt that every invasive iguana will ever be eradicated from Gasparilla Island. Nor will all of the tilapia and plecos be removed from the mainland’s waterways. Steady, intensive hunting and fishing can, however, control the numbers enough to ensure the survival of the native wildlife for another year.

  Snakeheads

  I was becoming dangerously smug. On the very first cast I’d caught a fish! I could bring it in, kill it, put it on ice, and go home. Mission accomplished!

  Only not so much. I had it in close enough that I could see it was definitely a snakehead. Then it did a sort of sideways flip, bit through the line, and disappeared. I was left with a sadly chomped-off length of fishing line and an open mouth.

  My first thought was: I’m going to need a bigger rod.

  If there’s a poster child for invasive species in North America, it’s the snakehead fish. In 2002, the first wild population was detected in a pond in Crofton, Maryland. Within days, the national media went crazy over the discovery, branding the invaders “Frankenfish.” The species was bizarre to them because of its apparent lack of predators, sharp teeth, and its ability to survive for long periods on dry land. Some species of snakehead can grow to more than three feet long. The public’s imagination quickly processed this information and imagined an enormous fish that would squirm out of the water, crawl over the ground, and kill pets or even human beings. Suddenly, people were terrified — so terrified that two horror movies were quickly produced to take advantage of the rampant fear of these fish.

  Every invasive species is native somewhere, though, and understanding an animal begins with learning about where it came from. Snakeheads are a group of about thirty species of fish from different parts of Asia. They are sharp-toothed ambush predators that can accelerate rapidly. The species in Crofton, Maryland, is the northern snakehead (Channa argus). It doesn’t get as big as the notorious giant snakehead (C. micropeltes), which many in the media incorrectly describe as being the problem. Although a few giant snakeheads have been caught in the wild in the United States, it’s the northern snakehead that has established expanding breeding populations in the wild.

  The snakehead has a clever and efficient design. It looks something like the native bowfin, with a long fin along the top. It has excellent camouflage (the colors are similar to a copperhead snake) and the ability to gulp air from the surface rather than depending on the absorption of dissolved oxygen in the water passing over its gills.

  This air-gulping capacity enables snakeheads to survive in poor habitat with shallow water, where other fish would die. This adaptation may seem strange, but many other species of fish share the ability: Some catfish, for example, such as the invasive armored species I encountered in Florida, have it.

  Somehow people overlooked the fact that the ability to gulp air was not exclusive to the snakehead, and this characteristic added to the hype surrounding the arrival of the northern snakeheads in Maryland. The result? The state of Maryland took brisk, serious action. It hit that pond with the most deadly chemicals it dared to use and then drained it.

  Among the dead snakeheads were a pair of large adults and a great many young snakeheads, obviously a breeding population.

  After Maryland’s swift and decisive action, a game of Whac-A-Mole erupted in the area. Snakeheads were found to have already somehow ended up in the nearby Potomac River. Genetic analysis suggests that the snakeheads in the Potomac originated from a separate introductory event, one not related to how they got into the pond. It seems a strange coincidence that two sources dumped the same kind of fish, originating from the other side of the planet, into bodies of water only a few miles apart (especially a fish that most people had never heard of), but that’s what scientists think happened.

  Snakeheads actually weren’t rare in the United States before we started hearing about them on the news. When I was in middle school (in Columbia, Maryland, near a tributary of the Potomac, as it happens), some of my friends were serious fish geeks. These boys could be divided into two groups: the kids whose parents let them have a fifty-five-gallon tank and those who were stuck with the limitations of ten-gallon aquarium. The ten-gallon kids were breeding small fish, such as bettas. The kids with the bigger tanks were into Brazilian arowanas and Asian snakeheads.

  Even the guys with snakeheads seemed to start out with a ten-gallon setup. As the fish grew, though, they’d graduate to a much bigger tank. I remember seeing their six-inch snakeheads and marveling at the vigor with which they would tear apart a feeder goldfish only seconds after it was dropped into the tank. We all knew they’d eventually grow to be more than a foot and a half long, but that seemed far in an unimaginable future.

  Even a fifty-gallon tank is a bit small for a fish pushing eighteen inches that will attack fish of equal size. And what would happen when those friends of mine went away to college? Or if they got bored with the hobby? Or their families moved someplace where a big aquarium wasn’t allowed? No kid wants to kill his own pet.

  Even I must admit to unleashing a nonnative species as a child. When I was fourteen, I went to a crawfish boil put on by a family friend. He had ordered a mess of Louisiana crayfish, alive and kicking, to be shipped to Virginia for what turned out to be a great party. At the end of the evening, there were a lot of live crayfish left. I brought home a few dozen in a bag and obliviously dumped them into a pond next to our house. I was doing them a favor, I thought. Of course, being just a kid, I knew nothing about the danger of invasive species. Today, descendants of those crayfish are still in my parents’ pond (and who knows how far downstream).

  Eventually a local man who had purchased snakeheads for food confessed to dumping them in that pond in Maryland, having tired of keeping them in an aquarium.

  Purchasing a live fish for food may seem strange to most Americans, but among certain immigrant populations this is not uncommon. In China and Korea, snakeheads are a traditional food, and Asian markets often keep a tank of them. In parts of Asia, people believe that eating fresh snakehead can help someone recover more quickly from surgery, and the fish is valued as much for its role in medicine as in food. In the United States, until the brouhaha in Maryland, there were no restrictions on the importation or sale of live snakeheads. As a matter of fact, the fish’s ability to gulp air made it easier than other fish to import live. Today it is illegal to import live snakeheads into the United States, though smuggling still occurs.

  There are snakeheads of various species, mostly northerns, in Florida, with suspected breeding populations in California, Alabama, and Hawaii as well. Game wardens think many of these ar
e the result of deliberate introduction by people involved in selling snakeheads for food. By dumping them into waterways, those purveyors would have a live source without having to pay to import them.

  Some government authorities and scientists who study the fish or the local ecology doubt that northerns are established in Florida. My experience contradicts this, however. I’ve spoken with enough fishermen who have caught snakeheads, and have visited enough online forums of fishermen who work the canals of southern Florida, and seen enough photos posted online to believe those who say they’re catching them on a daily basis. According to these fishermen, the conversation is no longer about how many snakeheads are around but rather about which hooks and lures are best to land the biggest trophies.

  Once I decided to look for snakeheads to eat, naturally I wanted to see what was going on in the neighborhood of the most notorious introductions along the Potomac River. Both Maryland and Virginia (which share the Potomac) require that all snakehead catches be reported. I started researching where and by whom snakeheads had been caught.

  The most recent government data I found indicates that no single fisherman on the Virginia stretch of the Potomac has ever caught more than two snakeheads in a season. This was disheartening. I knew the fish were out there and causing problems, but maybe it would be difficult to encounter one. There are plenty of retirees devoted to fishing who fish the upper Potomac several times a week. If they weren’t getting more than two, what were the odds of my fishing for a few days — and with no boat — and getting a bite, let alone catching one? Officially, there were so few snakeheads caught in Virginia that they might as well not be there.

  This made me put off going after the fish on the Potomac. I even considered making another trip to Florida, where I knew they were more plentiful (if less documented). Then one night in July, at about two in the morning, I was reading a blog and saw that a snakehead had been caught for the first time at Mason Neck State Park, which is in northern Virginia. I’d never heard of the park, so I looked it up and then mapped out directions. Less than twelve hours later, I was in the car and on my way north in search of snakeheads.

  Mason Neck State Park closes at dusk and doesn’t allow camping, so I had to find somewhere else to sleep in order to get to the park early in the morning. Only a few miles away is Pohick Bay Regional Park, operated jointly by several counties. Campsites were available, so I went there first. I walked into the office and spoke with the young man behind the counter.

  “Hi, I’m looking for snakeheads. Ever catch one around here?”

  The kid looked befuddled, then collected himself.

  “I don’t do a whole lot of fishing myself, but I’ve seen people bring ’em in at the boat landing plenty. They catch ’em out on the river.”

  Now I was on to something. Snakeheads might officially be recent here, but it sure sounded as if they were a regular feature under the radar.

  I paid for my campsite and left. After I’d pitched the tent, I went down a steep slope, carrying rod and tackle box, to the river.

  Where it was possible, I walked along the river; much of the bank was too steep and tangled to approach. A trail ran roughly parallel to the bank through the woods, and I followed that until I reached a boat landing, its parking area full of trucks and trailers. A sign forbade fishing off the landing and from the dock, from which boats were rented on the weekend, and from anywhere else that might get a person even remotely close to a fish. All I had to do, though, was stand around the boat landing and make a nuisance of myself for a while, and then I got the good word about snakeheads.

  A motley assortment of fishermen brought in their boats. When I asked them, they told me that, yes, they’d hooked snakeheads on the river from time to time. None of them had been after snakeheads and none had bothered to report his catch. One guy had actually thrown his fish back alive.

  This sounded promising. I looked for a spot along the bank where I could cast past the many yards of green scum that floated near shore. Banned from the floating dock, I didn’t have many options.

  I considered what lure to use; despite the online forums, there hadn’t been much information on the subject. Most people seemed to get snakeheads on bass fishing tackle, so I started with an old bass fisherman’s standby, the red rubber worm.

  A long cast sent it way out, and I began my retrieve as soon as it hit the water. I reeled slowly. When the worm was almost in, lying in the water no more than seven feet from me, a large blur dropped out of the sky from behind me and landed on the lure in a confusing mass of brown-and-white feathers.

  I had no idea what was happening.

  Then I realized that what I was looking at was an osprey that had pounced on my lure. I’d heard of clever ospreys learning to grab fish from lines as fishermen reeled them in, but rubber worms from a hook?

  Great, I thought as the osprey flailed about at the end of the line, I’ve caught myself an osprey and it’s gotten itself hooked. I’ll have to get it off somehow without getting my eyes gouged out or being ticketed by Fish and Wildlife.

  It struck the water and sent spray into my face, then it was back in the air, without carrying off either my rod or me. The hook was still in the water and the rubber worm was gone. I stared at the sky, slack-jawed, for at least a minute.

  Sensible people would have found another place to fish. On the other hand, sensible people don’t decide at two in the morning to drive for hours on I-95 to sleep in a tent and catch an invasive Frankenfish that had been reported only once in the area.

  I kept fishing that spot. Half an hour later I had my first bite from something other than a federally protected raptor. It was a fish, though not a big one. I worked it in, not clear on when to set the hook. As it zigzagged its way toward shore, I saw its outline once it got to ten feet from the water’s edge. The long dorsal fin suggested either a snakehead or a native bowfin.

  Before I could determine what it was, once again a feathered torpedo hit the water and once again the son of a bitch nabbed what was on the hook and flew off with it before I could grasp what was happening. This one left the lure, though.

  Sunset was approaching and the mosquitoes were coming out in force. I wound in my line and went back to my tent.

  That night, my campsite was raided by a bunch of raccoons that stole a couple of crab traps, presumably for the sake of some leftover bits of chicken necks still clinging to the wire. In the morning, I looked for the traps but in vain. Those animals at Pohick Bay Regional Park are a bunch of thieves, and maybe liars and tax cheats, too.

  After I broke camp, I drove the few miles to Mason Neck State Park, which I’d been aiming for all along, and parked near the nature center. A park ranger was walking toward his truck, and I quickly intercepted him.

  Did he know anything about snakeheads in the area? Officer Timothy C. Smith told me I’d come to the right place, and he directed me to a pond some four hundred yards away.

  This pond, he promised me, was full of snakeheads. People caught them now and then, but no other fish larger than a minnow swam in it. I asked him what kind of tackle people used, and he suggested a top-water lure that could be skipped over the plentiful muck and weeds.

  All righty, then. I grabbed my gear and hauled it down to the pond. It was a small body of water, less than half an acre, but it was connected to the river via a small inlet, a stream of perhaps a dozen yards. At high tide this stream filled and the river washed into the pond. A sort of boardwalk ran along one side of the pond.

  My rod was a light Shakespeare Uglystik with a cheap reel that I’d used for bass and bluegill, loaded with eight-pound test line. I rigged a wooden top-water lure with a couple of treble hooks on it and cast into the middle of the pond, home of the least amount of pond scum to snag the hooks.

  Within a second, I had a great almighty bite. This fish nailed the lure with incredible force and ran with it like a tarpon. I was stunned at the ferocity with which something had grabbed the lure. This didn’t feel l
ike any largemouth bass I’d ever hooked.

  The fish fought hard and I fought back. I strained at it, tightened up the drag, and cranked the reel. I was becoming dangerously smug. On the very first cast I’d caught a fish! I could bring it in, kill it, put it on ice, and go home. Mission accomplished!

  Only not so much. I had it in close enough that I could see it was definitely a snakehead. Then it did a sort of sideways flip, bit through the line, and disappeared. I was left with a sadly chomped-off length of fishing line and an open mouth.

  My first thought was: I’m going to need a bigger rod. Back in the car I only had one other fishing rig, my saltwater rod and reel, a nice Shimano Sonora 5000 on a stiff two-piece rod and loaded with a sixteen-pound test. Maybe the heavier line would hold up better . . . I wouldn’t be able to cast that rod with precision, though.

  The only top-water lure I’d brought was gone for good, so I spent the rest of the day fishing with various inappropriate lures with, not surprisingly, no luck. I saw plenty of snakeheads once the wind picked up and blew the pond scum to one side. Their long, prehistoric-looking, almost reptilian bodies were clearly visible when they basked near the surface.

  Other than the snakeheads, I didn’t see a single fish longer than two inches. Every fish that belonged in that pond was gone, except for smaller fry that had probably washed down in the stream that fed the pond or come in from the river at high tide. The only other moving life were thousands of tadpoles, hundreds of frogs, and dozens of turtles. Ominously, one of the turtles was missing a leg.

  Tim, the park ranger, showed up to see how I was doing.

  “What are these fish still doing here?” I asked. “Can’t you get DGIF [the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries] or someone else to come in and electrofish them out?”

  “We tried,” Tim said with a sigh. “We put in a request to DGIF a year ago and they didn’t want to come out. They just said to let people fish them out.”