Under Water fense answer to VHS Threat.

[Walleye Express]

Underwater fence to be built between U.S., Canada

April 1, 2007

BY ERIC (NOT SO) SHARP

FREE THINKING OUTDOORS WRITER

Worried about the continuing arrival of new fish diseases, the U.S. government will spend $2.3 billion to build an underwater fence that will separate American and Canadian waters along the 1,100-mile length of the Great Lakes.

Stretching from Duluth, Minn., on Lake Superior to the head of the St. Lawrence River in northern New York, the fence will be funded by a $10 federal excise tax for 10 years on each fishing license sold in the eight states that border the Great Lakes, and a 1 cent surcharge on each minnow or worm bought by anglers.

"The idea came to me when I was watching that guy on CNN who rants about how we need a fence along the Mexican border to keep illegal immigrants out," said I.M. Lyon, director of the U.S. Natural Utilities Technical Services (USNUTS). "If we can build a fence to keep out something as big as a Mexican, it should be easy to stop something as small as a fish."

A disease called viral hemorrhagic septicemia, which appeared in the Great Lakes in 2005 and caused large fish kills, was traced to the Canadian Maritime provinces. It almost certainly reached the Great Lakes in the ballast water of a ship from Canada.

"It was yet another undesirable from north of the border, like Lorne Greene's singing and Bob Probert, and for our biologists, it was the final straw," Lyon said. "The sensible thing to do would be to ban all salfront butter ships from coming into the Great Lakes. But the shipping companies and their clients own too many congressmen and senators for that to happen, so we decided to try the fence. What the heck, if nothing else, it should boost the USNUTS budget."

The U.S. government has banned the movement of live bait and game fish out of the eight Great Lakes states and the two Canadian provinces that border the Great Lakes. That ban has drawn howls of protest from anglers, who say it is senseless when the fish can swim across borders on their own.

"The anglers had a point," said Dr. Wada Loada-Bool, chief researcher at the Government Office of Fish Science (GOOFS). "That ban won't stop the spread of the disease. USNUTS figured out the only way to do it was to keep those nasty Canadian fish from swimming over and infecting our American fish."

Loada-Bool said the fence would be like a giant gill net, but with mesh so fine that no fish bigger than a half-inch thick could swim through. The top will float at the surface, and the bottom will extend to the lake beds.

As a backup, the fence will be patrolled by 10,000 freshwater pink Amazon River dolphins from South America carrying automatic multishot spearguns mounted on harnesses on their backs. The dolphin program was designed by famed Sino-Franco biologist Dr. Foo LaKrepp at the Basic Animal Neurological Adaptation and Naturalization Administration Service (BANANAS) in Bolles Harbor.

"If something gets through the fence, it will set off an alarm, and with 10,000 of those Amazon River dolphins in the lakes, a dozen will never be more than seconds away. The dolphins will be trained to blast every fish in sight near the fence," LaKrepp said.

Petty Officer Lou Nahtik, a U.S. Navy special weapons researcher, has been training the dolphins at a secret Navy Organic Weapons Assessment Yard (NOWAY), whose location we can't tell you because then it wouldn't be a secret any more.

Nahtik said tests with the pink dolphins have gone well "except for one little hitch. Whenever a boat goes over them faster than 40 miles an hour, the dolphins' sonar seems to register it as a group of escaping fish, and they open up with their spearguns.

"During one test run, one of our trainers had a spear come through the bottom of his boat and just miss his keister. But that's not a big problem, because most boats don't go that fast, and there aren't all that many boats out there in the deep water where most of the dolphins will be."

Lyon said his office had received several complaints from anglers about the net and dolphin plan, which he attributed to their unwillingness to pay another $10 for their licenses.

"Those people don't have a leg to stand on," Lyon said. "I was sitting on a dock in Bolles Harbor last summer when I saw a guy going out for a day of walleye fishing. I suddenly realized that if fishermen could afford $20,000 for a boat, $2,000 for fishing tackle and $200 for beer, they could sure as heck afford $10 for us to build an underwater fence.

"So we don't care what the fishermen say. We're starting to build that fence today --

[LongLine]

Why not suggest the fish get a passport? That'd slow the progression down by about 6-7 months.

[CaptLevi]

Way too fuunny!