Is the Asian Carp’s name racist? With all the China bashing going on questions are being raised on a lot of the terminology, some like kung foo virus were political, others like the Asian Carp have been around for years. Is this being PC or reflecting the diversity of our nation and our standing in the world?
Minnesota state Sen. Foung Hawj was never a fan of the “Asian carp” label commonly applied to four imported fish species that are found in Louisiana and are wreaking havoc in the U.S. heartland. They infest numerous rivers and are bearing down on the Great Lakes. But the last straw came when an Asian business delegation arriving at the Minneapolis airport encountered a sign reading “Kill Asian Carp.” It was a well-intentioned plea to prevent spread of the invasive fish, but the message was off-putting to the visitors. Hawj and fellow Sen. John Hoffman won approval in 2014 of a measure requiring that Minnesota government agencies refer to the fish as “invasive carp.” That came despite backlash from the late radio commentator Rush Limbaugh, who ridiculed it as political correctness. “I had more hate mail than you could shake a stick at,” Hoffman said.
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Other governmental agencies are doing the same now after seeing the anti-Asian protests during the pandemic.
Now some other government agencies are taking the same step in the wake of anti-Asian hate crimes that surged during the coronavirus pandemic. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service quietly changed its designation to “invasive carp” in April, and the Asian Carp Regional Coordinating Committee, representing U.S. and Canadian agencies that are trying to contain the carp, will do likewise Aug. 2, said Charlie Wooley, U.S. agency’s Great Lakes regional director. “We wanted to move away from any terms that cast Asian culture and people in a negative light,” said Charlie Wooley, the agency’s Great Lakes regional director.
The Entomological Society of America is taking a broad look at names and has dropped Gypsy from Gypsy Moth. Other organizations are joing in.
Yet the switch to “invasive carp” might not be the final say. As experts and policymakers have learned in their long struggle against the prolific and wily fish, almost nothing about them is simple. Scientists, technical journals, government agencies, language style guides, restaurants and grocery stores may have ideas about what to call them, based on differing motives – including getting more people to eat the critters.
One way to lower the incursion woukd be to serve car[p as a fish option. That has not caught on here as many still see carp as a bottom feeder.
“It’s a four-letter word in this country,” said Kevin Irons, assistant fisheries chief with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. The four species described collectively as Asian carp – bighead, silver, grass and black carp – were brought from China a half-century ago to rid Southern sewage and aquaculture ponds of algae, weeds and parasites. They escaped into the wild and have migrated up the Mississippi and other major rivers. The Great Lakes and their $7 billion sport fishery are vulnerable. The grass carp is found in all of Louisiana’s 64 parishes, and the other species in fewer, according to a 2015 report from the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. In coastal waters, they’ve been found in Vermillion Bay, Cote Blanche Bay, Drum Bay and on on Holly and Rutherford beaches, according to a 2020 report to the Louisiana Finfish Task Force.
It is not a good fish as it destroys much in the waters it inhabits.
Voracious and aggressive, the silver and bighead carp gobble plankton that other fish need. Grass carp munch ecologically valuable wetland plants, and black carp feast on mussels and snails. Silvers can also hurtle from the water like missiles, causing nasty collisions with boaters. So far they’ve been netted mostly for bait, pet food and a few other uses. Philippe Parola, a Baton Rouge-based chef, trademarked the label “silverfin” for Asian carp fishcakes he developed around 2009.
Maybe all that is need is better marketing! Illinois is planning to do that.
The state of Illinois and partner organizations hope a splashy media campaign in the works will get bigger results. Dubbed “The Perfect Catch,” it will describe Asian carp as “sustainably wild, surprisingly delicious,” high in protein and omega-3 fatty acids AND low in mercury and other contaminants. And it will give the fish a market-tested new name, which will remain secret until the makeover rollout, Irons said. A date hasn’t been announced. The goal is to spur interest all along the chain, from commercial netters to processors, grocery stores and restaurants. The tactic has worked before. After the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service rechristened “slimehead” as “orange roughy” in the late 1970s, demand for the deep-sea dweller rose so sharply that some stocks were depleted. Chilean sea bass, another cold-water favorite, once was known less appealingly as “Patagonian toothfish.”
The question now is what name. To designate the Asian Carp as invasive carp may not be true. It is also imprecise and not a good marketing term.
The rebranding campaign will seek U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval to use the new moniker for interstate commerce. But even if the FDA goes along and consumers buy in, scientists are another matter. The American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists and the American Fisheries Society have a committee that lists fish titles, including scientific names in Latin and common ones thought up by people “who originally described the species or included them in a field guide or other reference,” said panel chairman Larry Page, curator of fishes at the Florida Museum of Natural History. For example, there’s “Micropterus salmoides,” which became known as largemouth bass, and “Oncorhynchus mykiss,” or rainbow trout. The committee has never adopted Asian carp as a term for the four invasive species, Page said.
The Asian Carp was named in the 1990’s as it became a fish people worried about.
It was never a good idea, said Patrick Kocovsky, a fish ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and one of the paper’s authors, because the species affect the environment in different ways. Song Qian, a University of Toledo environmental sciences professor who teamed with Kocovsky on the article, said carp is a valued protein source in many Asian nations. It’s a good-luck symbol in his native China. “If you say it’s invasive, bad and needs to be eradicated, even though it’s because of miscommunication, that’s why there’s talk about cultural insensitivity,” Qian said. It’s most accurate to refer to the fish species individually, Qian said, acknowledging a collective name is sometimes convenient. The challenge now is finding the right one.
For many, a name can be offensive or maybe just an irritant.
Regardless of which one eventually sticks, Hawj, the Minnesota legislator who immigrated to the U.S. from Laos as a child refugee after the Vietnam War, said he’s glad “Asian carp” is on its way out. He recalled the warm applause he received at an Asian-American conference after announcing his state had made the change. “It’s a nuisance, a small thing, but it can resonate greatly,” he said.
For many of us, the main question will be – will we be eating them in the near future.