Quit Carping!

continued

didn't jump around, we wouldn't hear anywhere near as much about them," Diana shrugs.

"It's a red herring, so to speak," says Gerald Smith, professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology. He and Diana say that the warm-water import (known also as silver carp or bighead carp) is unlikely to flourish in the chilly Great Lakes.

Andy Buchsbaum, executive director of the National Wildlife Foundation's Great Lakes office, agrees that the Asian carp won't thrive in the "open waters of the Great Lakes," but says they could decimate the fish populations in rivers that flow into the lakes. Diana responds that they prefer longer rivers than the ones feeding the lakes, and that dams will block them from moving very far inland.