Snakeheads Confirmed In Susquehanna Basin - In Potomac Watershed, May Have Reached Equilibrium
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Snakeheads are toothy, slimy and huge, weighing up to 20 pounds. They can also breathe out of water as long as they stay wet, and use their fins to travel short distances on land. They mostly eat fish, frogs, small minnows, crawfish and eels, but have also been known to bring down ducks and small mammals. Until this summer, known Pennsylvania populations of snakeheads have been mostly limited to the Schuylkill and Delaware rivers and small ponds and lakes near Philadelphia. The fish living there, and in random ponds and lakes in the state, have been introduced by people, Kaufmann said.
The Octoraro snakeheads appear to have traveled north on their own and were caught below the Octoraro Reservoir. The threatened Chesapeake logperch and the American eel, which biologists are trying protect and propagate, have been found near the reservoir’s dam. “We are concerned, besides the usual concerns about all invasive species, that this is the general location where eels are trapped and transferred,” Kaufmann said. “They gather there.”
So far, the presence of snakeheads in other Bay tributaries has not wreaked environmental havoc. Snakeheads now swim in many Maryland rivers that drain into the Bay, including on the Eastern Shore. They were noted in the lower Potomac River by 2004 and have since become well-established in most, if not all, of that river’s tributaries in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia. One was found in Opequon Creek, a West Virginia tributary to the Potomac, in April. In 2012, snakeheads moved into the Rappahannock River and reached the James River this year, said John Odenkirk, fisheries biologist with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.
Odenkirk said that snakeheads in the Potomac tributaries have reached an equilibrium with their surroundings and their growth has plateaued. His surveys of snakeheads and bass showed that, on average, 10 snakeheads were caught every hour and largemouth bass were counted at 25 fish per hour. Both fish occupy similar niches and seem to be coexisting for now.
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https://www.bayjournal.com/article/invasive_snakeheads_found_in_susquehanna_tributary