Video: Monster Goldfish Are Breeding in Lake Tahoe, Almost As Big As A Man

 

Monster-sized goldfish up to a foot and a half long are being pulled from Lake Tahoe in what officials are calling a case of aquarium dumping. The massive bright red and orange fish are feared to be steadily multiplying in the waters of Sierra Nevada after managing to survive after released into the wild by humans.

Credit: KCRA

Christine Ngai, a researcher who frequents the lake hunting invasive species, notably the largemouth bass, says the numbers found are astonishing and potentially devastating to the lake’s ecosystem.

‘One day they caught 15 in just this one corner in the Tahoe keys,’ she told KCRA.
An exact idea of their numbers, and for how long they’ve managed to survive, is still unknown.

In an effort to protect the lake’s delicate ecosystem that’s threatened by invasive fish, Ms Ngai visits the lake with a team who use electric prongs to stun fish for collecting from the water.

‘You can get 200 fish in one scoop,’ she told KCRA of their method.

But lately the results in that scoop have been far from ordinary.

‘You can just see these bright, golden orange things start to float up and you’re like what is that? and then you take a net and you scoop it up, and it’s a gold fish,’ she says.

To Ms Ngai and others who work to protect the lake, the surprise is far from pleasant.
Among environmentalists fears are that the fish will damage the ecosystem by eating other native animals’ food and even by spreading a koi herpresvirus easily transmittable to other fish.

 

Another major fear is that the fish will damage the water’s pristine clarity.

‘Those small little things that people do can have a large impact when you consider that you know, there’s probably not just one person doing it,’ Ted Thayer of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency told KCRA.

And people aren’t just dumping goldfish in in Lake Tahoe.

Sightings of the domestic fish have been in Arizona, Michigan, Missouri, the U.K., and France where a man claimed to capture one weighing more than 30lbs.

In Tahoe, officials say the immediate threat to the lake is still the growing population of largemouth bass.

But with the spike in goldfish numbers, they say it’s an upcoming threat that can’t be ignored.

/Sources: KCRA And NewsaroundU

 

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