Snakehead fish in UK river

Snake fish,



Panic is setting in the UK waters as a snake fish was hooked in a river,
This monster of a fish brings fear that there may be more on there way,

These things are deadlier than a piranha, and eat pretty much everything that comes there way, they have also been known to kill people.

The Snake fish comes from Asia and has Teeth! these fish can also crawl out of water for 4 days.

Scientists believe that this may have been smuggled in to the UK and released, And are hoping than no breeding has happened,

Though our waters im suyre would be far to cold,

This fish caused major panic in the USA in 2002..

The snake head can grow up to 3ft!

link



[edit on 20-2-2008 by asala]

We are messing with ecosystems for ages, so no wonder in ecosystem starting to mess with us.
These species reshuffling and climate changes will, without any doubt, also introduce human bugs/parasytes to unfamiliar places, and globalization will help its spread. So ,there "are bigger fish at sea" then 3ft, so to speak, that worry me.

I put a small snakehead in my old 150 gallon tank. It was tiny and I figured it would make a nice tank mate for my african aba knife, my giant pacu and a few other large predator fish.

The snakehead grew to biblical proportions in a short time span and then gnawed the tail off the knife fish (a very expensive death). The snakehead wound up killing almost everything in the tank before we took it out and gave it away.


nasty fish that will take over a lake or pond in no time.

[edit on 20-2-2008 by Crakeur]

Originally posted by asala
The snake head can grow up to 3ft!

Actually it can grow much bigger. I don't have a link for you, but 3 ft (1 meter) is sorta the average adult size. The biggest one I've seen was in a local newspaper a couple years back. The monster was as big as a small family car.

Very dangerous fish. Especially the mothers. They actually guard the fry until they've grown to about 1 feet. The young are orange in colour. If you get too close to the area where the young are, the mother will actually jump out of the water to snap at you. Unpleasant experience, to say the least.

[edit on 20/2/2008 by Beachcoma]

QUite an aggressive predator fish, it would be a scary inncident running acrossed one by accident.
Seem's that Maryland has it's fears set up in the right frame of mind, they have apparently found the species reproducing in their fresh waters as well. Even though it is an older story, it sounds as if they are truly concerned about the presence of this particular breed of auquatica.

"You only expect to get a small percentage of the fish when you're sampling," said Steve Early, Maryland's freshwater fisheries manager, who conducted the survey. "But I'm worried if I have 100 or if I have 1,000 in the pond; I've still got too many."

Story:
news.nationalgeographic.com...

As for them growing large, here is a caught Snake fish picture that tends to leave me thinking that they get much larger than 3' long...

Snakeheads are one of the worst invasive fish out there. Its no Nile Perch, but its close. Once they are in a watershed its tough to get rid of them. Really don't have too many options.