Fishing Down the Bighead and Silver Carps: Reducing the Risk of Invasion to the Great Lakes

In a collaborative project led by Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Iyob Tsehaye and others at the Quantitative Fisheries Center and Department of Fisheries and Wildlife developed a simulation model to explore prospects for the collapse of Asian carp in the Illinois River through intensive fishing. The model was parameterized using estimates of demographic parameters obtained using hierarchical Bayesian models. These models (growth, maturity, catch curve) were fit using MCMC simulation using Gibbs sampler in WinBUGS. All models were run on MSU’s HPPC. The study was supported by funding through Cooperative Agreement (No. 30181AJ071) between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.