Sigma Col�on

“OCCUPYING NATURE: FISHING FOR MEANING IN THE ASIAN

CARP”

Abstract

This article explores the ecological and social pro-cesses by which some species become invasive andthe prominent environmental and commercial rolethey play as such. The deliberate introduction ofnon-native species to novel environments is as old asthe history of human migration but in recent yearstheir accelerated movement globally made strikinglyvisible the impact of these nonhuman occupations ofthe natural world. Methods for dealing with theproblem of invasive species highlight the intercon-nections among degraded ecologies, the social trans-formation of local environments, and processes ofglobalization. The example of the Asian carp dem-onstrates how the natural world intrudes on humaninfrastructure and landscapes, exceeding the uses towhich humans endeavor to put it, occupying andaltering the organic and built environmentalike. [environment, occupation, invasive species,consumption, global trade]

Walk into Miya’s Sushi Restaurant in New Havenand you can choose to have an extraordinaryexperience.1 Bun Lai, owner and chef, created theworld’s first menu of invasive species from whichyou can order the otherwise undesirable, alien fishand algae found in Connecticut waters—but trans-formed, by Lai’s expertise and ideology, intosomething tasty that any one of us might eat.More than culinary skill, his food makes a premiseabout non-native species and suggests a counter totheir occupation (Simberloff et al. 2013). Lai’slocal approach to the global problem of invasivespecies highlights the interconnections amongdegraded ecologies, the social transformationof local environments, and processes of globaliza-tion.

As an adjective, “invasive” accuratelydescribes a characteristic of some non-native spe-cies once placed in novel environments. But theterm conceals two important histories: the human

intervention that first transports flora and faunato environments far beyond their place of originand the complex ecological and social processes bywhich some species become invader-occupiers(Lockwood et al. 2007:7–15). Exploring thoseentwined histories reveals the hidden implicationsof finding invasive species on, of all places, amenu. The example of the Asian carp demon-strates how the natural world intrudes on humaninfrastructure and landscapes, exceeding the usesto which humans endeavor to put it, occupyingand altering the organic and built environmentalike.

Speciation, the evolutionary formation of newbiological species, occurs primarily through geo-graphic isolation. The river valleys, mountains,oceans, and ice sheets of the world once repre-sented more rigid physical boundaries to themovement of humans and other species (Loweet al. 2004; Lockwood et al. 2007). But as peopledispersed across continents, they moved withplants and animals—some domesticated speciesand many hidden companions and germs (Crosby2004). The deliberate introduction of non-nativespecies is as old as the history of human migrationbut in recent years, their accelerated movementglobally made strikingly visible the impact of thesenon-human occupations of the natural world.

Described as riding “freely on the conveyorbelt of global trade,” so-called invaders havebecome the intimate, and mostly hidden, compan-ions accompanying the goods and commoditiesregularly transported, imported, and exported forour benefit (Baskin 2003:288). Marine lionfish,zebra mussels, and killer algae are among thosedetested and feared species that can travel theworld over on the hulls or in the ballast water thatcargo ships regularly add and dump to maintainbalance. Those particular stowaways are known todisrupt the livelihoods of fishermen and farmerswho depend on the native species that aredestroyed by the eating and habitat practices ofinvaders—but not all exotic animals and plants

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Transforming Anthropology, Vol. 22, Number 1, pp. 24–30, ISSN 1051-0559, electronic ISSN 1548-7466. © 2014 by theAmerican Anthropological Association. All rights reserved.DOI: 10.1111/traa.12019.

caught up in human travel and commerce posesuch a threat.

Leading specialists of biotic invasions defineinvaders as those that “establish a new range inwhich they proliferate, spread, and persist to thedetriment of the environment” (Mack et al.2000:689). These species are called invading alienpredators and described in the language of war asneeding to be eliminated, controlled, kept underconstant vigilance in order to “stem the tide ofinvasions,” because of the devastation they cancause to ecological and social landscapes (Baskin2003:289). Animal invaders eat, compete, andhybridize with native species, sometimes to thepoint of native species extinction. Plant invaderscan disrupt soil stabilization processes makingland more susceptible to erosion, they can alterhydrology and fire regime ecosystems, and dimin-ish native populations. Most agricultural pests arenon-native; they destroy crops, livestock, and fish-eries, raising the cost of food production. Agricul-tural losses due to introduced weeds are estimatedat $24 billion annually with $3 billion in manage-ment costs (Simberloff 2013:99). Aggressive invad-ers can impede navigation, clog waterways,destroy homes, and many human diseases are clas-sified as non-native (Mack et al. 2000; Lockwoodet al. 2007; Mooney 2005). Ecological invasionshave always been intimately linked to human liv-ing, but what is particular to our time is the rateand scope of those occupations.

The magnitude of the threat posed by intro-duced species was first broadly depicted by animalbiologist Charles Elton in his 1958 book, TheEcology of Invasion by Animals and Plants. Likethe short series of BBC radio lectures from whichthe book grew, Elton aimed to inform a broadaudience on the movement and implications ofnon-native species to new environments and theimportance of maintaining species diversity (Elton1958). The topic did not attract much attentionuntil the 1980s when the Scientific Committee onProblems of the Environment (SCOPE) broughttogether various scientists from around the worldto document problems posed by non-nativespecies. The books and articles produced in thatdecade solidified use of the term “invasive” todescribe conservation concerns related to non-native species. Invasion ecology grew into an out-wardly recognizable, Googable discipline, but thebasic terms related to the field became a problemin semantics (Simberloff 2013:8–9; Lockwood et al.2007:5–7). The term “invasive” is used inter-changeably with “non-native,” “non-indigenous,”

“exotic,” and “alien” to denote that a species isnot native to a particular environment. But theconnotations of such language have opened up thefield to criticism and to misunderstandings thatcome with borrowing from the social relationshipsamong people to understand environmental ones.The appeal of evoking militaristic and pejorativeanthropocentric concepts to convey the threat ofnon-native species can eclipse the material conse-quences of introduced species invasions.

Invasion is the last step in a series of stagesthat non-native species progress through whenintroduced to new environments. They are firsttransported: if they survive, they establish a popu-lation: if they succeed, they spread. Once popula-tions are abundant and unwieldy, suffocatingnative species and causing ecological and economicharm, the impact renders them invasive (Lock-wood et al. 2007:9). Geographer Paul Robbinssuggests an alternative to what he describes as themodern model of invasion: “the right plant, in theright place, at the right time” (Robbins 2004:140).Not quite the accident of history suggested therein,Robbins posits that the conditions constitutive ofinvasive species are cultural and political as muchas ecological; he asserts, “it is not species butsociobiological networks that are invasive” (Rob-bins 2004:140). Non-native species germinate andthrive in disturbed landscapes, places where thebiodiversity has already been degraded by humanactivity.

Human beings create the conditions and geo-graphic patterns of invasion. A recent study makesstrikingly visible global flows of potential invasion.Efforts to assess the risk of bioinvasion along ship-ping routes led researchers from the Universitiesof Bristol, UK, and Oldenburg, Germany to exam-ine the detailed logs of nearly three million shipvoyages that took place during 2007 and 2008(Seebens et al. 2013:783). Mapped and charted incolourful ways, the results indicate that non-nativespecies are more likely to spread when travellingintermediary distances—too short of a journeyresults in low invasion risk, too long and thechance of survival and spread is quite slim.Between 8,000 and 10,000 kilometers (about 5,000to 6,200 miles) to destination ports is the distancemost conducive to successful invasive species intro-ductions (Seebens et al. 2013:787). Large portssuch as Singapore and Hong Kong, as well asNew York and Long Beach are among those athigh risk of invasion, but the sheer density ofshipping traffic is not the only governing factor—species are sensitive to water temperatures and

Sigma Col�on 25

gravitate toward environmental similarity (Seebenset al. 2013:784–85). Furthermore, researches foundthat even moderate efforts to treat the ballastwater released by ships at ports would yield sub-stantial results in curbing the risk of invasion(Seebens et al. 2013: 787–89). Given the lack ofurgency to undertake this preventative measure—despite the drastic increase of invasive species inports, and the known costs to ecological and sociallandscapes—we might assume that the distur-bances caused by invasives in this context do notaffect all human communities equally. In accor-dance with literature that examines species inva-sion as a social process, Robbins calls attention tothe “power-laden circumstance and divided politi-cal and economic conditions into which an invad-ing species arrives” (Robbins 2004:143). The forcesof global trade will not yield, here, to the localeconomies and fisherman that rely on native spe-cies in those areas for their livelihoods nor willthey concede to environmental preservation.

If the implied terms of invasion ecology arethat all of humanity shares in the consequences ofenvironmental degradation, then the explicit claimthat the impact of invasion is uneven provides auseful frame of analysis. The current structuralapproach to invasive species follows what DavidHarvey characterizes as “‘the standard view’ ofenvironmental management in advanced capitalistsocieties,” under which “the general approach toenvironmental problems is to intervene only ‘afterthe event’” (Harvey 1999:162). Global measuresproposed by scientists to prevent the rampant andirreversible spread of invasive species attempt topromote environmental conservation that wouldbroadly benefit human health and economy, butcollective action is impeded by the unequally dis-tributed economic hazards of invaders.

Prevention is the most promising approachwith the most knowledgeable advocates. One ofthe world’s foremost experts on the topic of intro-duced species, Daniel Simberloff laments, however,that attempts to predict how introduced specieswill behave in novel environments are speculativeenough that most national and international policyassumes, first, their innocence (Simberloff 2003).It’s hard to know when non-natives might adaptharmoniously with native species, or have analways exoticized though accepted presence, orwholly occupy an environment to the exclusion ofindigenous species. A guilty, or invasive designa-tion, according to Executive Order 13112 issuedby President Clinton in 1999, implies that theintroduced species poses a threat to native species,

is a threat to human health and safety, and willrequire enormous financial resources to manageand fight them (Presidential Documents1999:6183). Last year the Nature Conservancyestimated $1.4 trillion in damages caused by inva-sives, a total of about 5% of the global economy(Nature Conservancy 2012). The U.S. spends over$120 billion dollars annually to manage invasivespecies, which collectively pose one of the biggestthreats to endangered species—second only tohabitat destruction (Simberloff 2013:99).

Pleas by Simberloff and others to change thestandard approach of coping with the conse-quences rather than preventing the problem sug-gest that a productive approach would be toinfluence the terms of invasion—to focus on the“sociobiological networks that are invasive” ratherthan isolate particular species as invasive (Robbins2004:140). Why bother trying to remove invasivespecies, given the formidable challenge andimmense financial burden? Because, through theiroccupation, they destroy the very particularities ofnature that help us distinguish and appreciate ourown, very specific, habitats.

Let me take the case of the Asian carp andpropose that it serve as a vehicle for understand-ing invasive ecology as a social process. Asian carpis the collective term commonly used to refer tofour species of fish that are considered invasive inUnited States waterways: silver, bighead, grass,and black carp. As the popular story goes, U.S.catfish farmers imported these fish species in the1970s in the hopes that they would eat the algae incatfish pens. This they did, and when major flood-ing caused these enclosures to overflow, Asiancarp entered the Mississippi River in the 1980sand are described as eating their way up Americanwatersheds ever since. After the Mississippi, flood-ing got them into the Missouri, after that theymade their way to the Ohio and Illinois River andcurrently threaten to enter the Great Lakes. Whenthey reach a new waterway, these voracious eatersdominate and decimate native fish species by out-competing them for food (Chick and Pegg 2001;Lohmeyer and Garvey 2009; Wanner and Klumb2009).

The origin story of the flood and the Asiancarps’ escape may be more mythical than accurate.In a recent presentation, Duane Chapman—Asiancarp expert who helped draft national policy onthe species’ management—revised the story in away that emphasizes the agency of fishes as mov-ing species. First he described their deliberate U.S.importation as part of a “Silent Spring” ethos that

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put carp to work eating unwanted vegetation inlieu of chemicals—a preference for using naturalrather than chemical algae killers. A well-knowntrope in invasion ecology involves people andmanagers, sometimes backed by scientific studies,introducing new species in an effort to modify anenvironment for human benefit. Many of thesestories—of rabbits and cane toads in Australia,European starlings, garlic mustard, and killer beesin North America—end in ecological disaster.Chapman asserts that within a year of their arri-val, silver carp were found in the wild, evidencethat they escaped enclosed fish pens without theaid of flooding. Chapman described to his audi-ence the carps’ unique capacity to jump as high as10 feet in the air and essentially wreak havoc: theyare capable of “emptying boats by slamming boatthrottles into high” said Chapman (Budig 2013).The more popular narration of escape and inva-sion in the 1980s coincides with the scientificSCOPE project’s classification of invasive species.

The news article of Chapman’s visit to theUniversity of Minnesota went out with the head-line “Asian Carp Can Be Controlled, Expert Says”(Budig 2013). Much of the work on invasive spe-cies—media overtly so and scientific studies moresubtly—treads a delicate balance of conveying themagnitude of the threat of invasive species whiletrying to maintain a degree of hope that humanaction is capable of abating the problem or at leastaffecting some change in the direction of environ-mental conservation. Reporters and scientists wanttheir respective audiences to grasp the scope, with-out succumbing to the pessimism of nonhumanoccupations. Thus, the belief that human volitioncan ultimately overpower carp agency becomes apowerful refrain.

The Asian carp is unique in its enormous sizeand its ability to leap out of water, like a flyingfish. Individual carp found in U.S. waterways caneasily exceed two feet in length and have beenknown to grow to over 100 pounds (Burton 2010).Their abundance and size connects to their abilityto consume up to 20% of their bodyweight perday in plankton—the small floating organisms thatform the foundation of the aquatic food chain andare vital to native fish survival (National WildlifeFederation n.d.). The iconography of these large,prolific invaders captures the absurd, unbelievableand alarming qualities of this invasive species. Theability of carp to captivate audiences and mobilizelocal as well as federal responses to their occupa-tion makes them ideal icons of invasive ecology.The magnitude of their ability to alter watersheds,

to outcompete and destroy native river biota, todisturb human expectations of the natural world,and the financial burden they pose, make thememblematic of the potential dangers of the grow-ing spread of invasive species.

Described as having occupied and invaded ourMidwestern Rivers and threatening to destroy fish-ery and ecosystems in the Great Lakes area, Presi-dent Obama recently allocated over $50 million toeradicate Asian carp (Flesher 2013). A few yearsprior, he appointed John Goss as newly createdAsian carp director, responsible for preventingthese fish from migrating from the rivers of theMidwest into Lake Michigan and then to the restof the Great Lakes (Alfano 2010). A formidable,and many fear, failing task.

Americans living outside of the Great Lakesand Mississippi River basins might not have regis-tered the news of Obama’s decision with the samezeal as microbloggers in China, who within a weekof the news, posted more than 85,000 tweets onthe subject. Carp is the most popular dinner-tablefish in China, and because silver carp are consid-ered a delicacy, populations there are rare due tooverfishing. News of a carp invasion in America,and in particular the resources devoted to curtail-ing it, inspired a range of responses including,“Save that $50 million and toss one million [Chi-nese] civil servants over to America and let themeat fish for 2 years. Nothing will be left” (Minter2012). Rather than incriminate the fish, as manyAmericans have done, this blogger offers a solu-tion that relies on displacing appetites. SomethingBun Lai does at Miya’s Sushi Restaurant.

The Asian carp scenario establishes settingand culture as key to definitions of invasives. AsRobbins emphasizes with another example, thespread of North American lawn turf grasses arenot considered invasive even though almost allspecies are non-native and aggressive (Robbins2004:144). In an iconic 1998 essay, “Planet ofWeeds,” David Quammen described all invasivespecies, whether they be plants, animals, or otherorganisms, as sharing a weedy quality with the fol-lowing characteristics: “they reproduce quickly,disperse widely when given a chance, tolerate afairly broad range of habitat conditions, take holdin strange places, succeed especially in disturbedecosystems, and resist eradication once they’reestablished. They are scrappers, generalists, oppor-tunists. They tend to thrive in human-dominatedterrain because in crucial ways they resembleHomo sapiens: aggressive, versatile, prolific, andready to travel” (Quammen 1998:66–67). The

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previous decade, historian Alfred Crosby sawEuropean colonizing efforts as analogous to therapid spread of weedy plants in new environments,but unlike Quammen, he gave weeds the benefit ofthe doubt, opining that “weeds are not good orbad; they are simply the plants that tempt the bot-anist to use such anthropomorphic terms asaggressive and opportunistic” (Crosby 2004:150).Given the hardiness and fortitude of weeds, Cros-by explained that the reason the entire surface ofthe earth is not covered in them is because “colo-nizing plants—weeds—can survive nearly anythingbut success. As they take over disturbed ground,they stabilize the soil, block the baking rays of thesun, and, for all their competitiveness, make it abetter place for other plants than it was before.Weeds are the Red Cross of the plant world; theydeal with ecological emergencies. When the emer-gencies are over, they give way to plants that maygrow more slowly but grow taller and sturdier”(Crosby 2004:169). Therein lies the silver lining ofthis particular narrative of occupation. However,it’s hard to imagine a time when human-causedecological degradation will slow down, let alonecease all together, giving some credence to Quam-men’s more visually and conceptually grim futureoutlook—the earth would still be covered in greenplants, he posits, but they would all be the sameplants—all weeds. Quammen takes the final con-clusion too far perhaps, after all humans sustainbiodiversity, albeit in limited ways, and ratherironically try to create it by introducing species tonew environments. But he identifies the importantpoint at which invasive species stop being aconceptual cultural construct: the place wherethey materially alter environmental landscapes.Humans have to preserve the unique plants andanimals on a local level if those species are to sur-vive the encroachment of human development andspecies invasion.

Introduced species and subsequent invasionsexist in tandem with human alterations to the nat-ural world. People lay the framework for invasionand also form important partnerships. Crosbydescribes the success of particular species and thatof Europeans as “a team effort by organisms thathad evolved in conflict and cooperation over along time” (Crosby 2004:143). Robbins expandson this relational dialectic by positing that “theecological, economic, and political context intowhich a species invades invariably leads to differ-ential effects on people, animals, and other plants.These uneven effects may create opportunities for‘alliances’ between invading species and other

various human and nonhuman actors that aresimultaneously benefited or empowered by theinvasion. The rate of invasion may accelerate,therefore, through positive cultural and politicalfeedbacks” (Robbins 2004:146). In the case ofAsian carp, his point suggests that we question ifhuman communities benefit from their invasion.The U.S. government 2014 fiscal budget, “pro-poses to maintain funding for the Great LakesRestoration Initiative at $300 million” to addressenvironmental issues including “addressing inva-sive species” (U.S. Office of Management andBudget 2013:153). Whether we characterize theindustry of federal managers employed to trackand impede the Asian carp invasion as gainingfrom it, controversy surrounds the human alli-ances that might perpetuate the invasion—such ascreating markets for eating the fish or killing carpas recreational sport. The fear is driven by whatDavid Harvey describes as the process by whichsocial and natural relations become consolidatedthrough “an ecological transformation whichrequires the reproduction of those relations to sus-tain it” (Harvey 1996:94). The classification ofAsian carp as invasive does not preclude themfrom integrating successfully into human socialenvironments.

Broader socio-environmental processes deter-mine the conditions and characteristics of invasivespecies. Recent news of an invasive species gener-ated the following online comment: “Why is itwhenever there’s some horrible scourge, it’s alwaysgot ‘African’ or ‘Asian’ in front of it?” (Berman2013) The name indicates a place of origin for theAsian carp, but it dehistoricizes and obscures thatthe species of fish it names inhabit very differentmeanings across time and in different cultures.Critics from fields including history, philosophy,gardening, and landscape architecture haveattacked attempts to control invasive species forbeing influenced by nativism, racism, and xeno-phobia, for good reason. Appeals against non-native species beginning in the 19th century—inflected with nativist language—became unfortu-nate metaphors for opposing immigrants andother American inhabitants. At its most extreme,the Nazi’s drive to eliminate nonindigenous plantsrelated directly to the campaign to annihilate non-Aryan people (Simberloff 2003:181). In the after-math of 9/11 the language of eco-terrorism andbiological invasions became suspect to critics suchas Banu Subramaniam who writes: “we are livingin a cultural moment where the anxieties ofglobalization are feeding nationalisms through

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xenophobia. The battle against exotic and alienplants is a symptom of a campaign that misplacesand displaces anxieties about economic, social,political, and cultural changes onto outsiders andforeigners” (Subramaniam 2001:34). Subraman-iam’s concern over the use of xenophobic dis-course to draw attention to the threat of invasivespecies ultimately trivializes nature’s agency andeclipses its capacity to occupy environments.

We have always lived in a world where inva-sive species are a product both of nature and ofconcept. Seeing them on a menu is particular toour time and not without its critics, includingDaniel Simberloff. Consuming the very thing thatthreatens to destroy community-level biodiversityand with it, some of our most cherished concep-tions of what nature means to us trivializes theproblem, he argues, and suggests a magic bulletkind of solution for a pervasive problem. The actof eating invasives embed people in the culture ofthese species and doing so, Simberloff argues, hasthe potential of devising a problematic niche—creating a market linked to economic incentivesmight ultimately privilege selling over regulatingthe product; it might also create incentives forpropagating invasive species in more environments(Simberloff et al. 2013). Simberloff prefers com-plete annihilation, the kind of ruthless approachrequired to get rid of, rather than live with theproblem. I agree with his priorities, but whetherwe explicitly put invasive species in ourbodies, they have always been part of our culture,our companions in evolution, migration, andoccupation.

Sigma Col�onSigma Col�on is a PhD candidate in American Stud-ies at Yale University. Her dissertation, Rivers Seenand Unseen, examines how and when North Ameri-can rivers become visible and how and when theybecome invisible—focusing on the impact thatphysical, ecological, and symbolic knowledge of riv-ers has on human culture and politics. Her recentpublication, “Environment in Debt,” considersenvironmental reparations in the financial languageof debt. American Studies, Yale University, NewHaven, CT 06520; sigma.colon@yale.edu

ACKNOWLEDGMENTSThank you to the Yale Working Group on Glob-alization and Culture and especially to Michael

Denning for engaging my project with enthusiasmand for constructive input on various drafts; tomy best friend, Risha Druckman, for providingmuch needed feedback and support; and to PeterAronow for taking me to eat invasive species atMiya’s Sushi.

NOTE1. This paper was presented originally as a

talk given as part of a collective presentation,“Spaces and Times of Occupation,” by the YaleWorking Group on Globalization and Culture.

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