In another alarm of nature spiraling to hell in Florida, scientists suspect global warming has enabled devil fish to plague and ravage the St. Johns River.
This summer, a team of state water and wildlife experts with the help of a commercial fishing crew cast industrial nets in a Central Florida portion of the river several miles south of Cocoa called Lake Winder.
Of the estimated 40,000 pounds of many species hauled in for examination, only a small portion, less than 20 percent, was Floridian: bass, crappie, brim, catfish, bowfin and others.
The rest were exotics: a type from South America broadly known as armored catfish, some of which are known also as devil fish, and tilapia from Africa.
Since that exploratory outing, unanswered questions have loomed. Why are the invaders there, why do they vastly outnumber natives, are they mucking up water quality and are they mowing down essential aquatic plants in the river? Research plans are unfolding.
“We are in the early stages of investigating whether we can lay the blame on these exotic fish,” said Reid Hyle, a freshwater fisheries biological scientist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute.
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