Service staff from the La Crosse Fishery Resources Office conducted two days of surveillance for Asian carp in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal and the Des Plaines River during mid-November with assistance from members of the Forest Preserve District of Cook County, Illinois.  No silver carp or bighead carp were captured or detected at any of the sites surveyed, but one grass carp was captured in the Des Plaines River at a site located six miles downstream of an electrical fish barrier.  Sixteen common carp were also collected and given to University of Illinois researchers who surgically implanted radio transmitters into many of these fish before they were subsequently released near the downstream-end of the barrier.  The movements of these fish and other radio-tagged common carp will be monitored to evaluate the effectiveness of the barrier in preventing upstream fish passage. 

This Service-led effort fulfilled surveillance requirements for the month to determine whether Asian carp are approaching the electrical barrier designed to prevent them from entering Lake Michigan. The responsibility for conducting Asian carp surveillance is shared and rotated from month to month among the Service, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago.