In a tree park reservoir in Zhongshan, Guangdong, staff found a 14 meters, weighing 50 pounds of "strange fish" alligator gar. This alligator gar "stole food" in the reservoir for more than a year, resulting in the reservoir almost being eaten up of fish. In order to catch the alligator gar, the staff had to drain the water in the reservoir and eventually succeeded in catching it. The alligator gar is staggeringly large, and its mouth is full of sharp teeth, making it incredibly difficult to catch.
The alligator gar is a large fish that lives in freshwater waters, mainly found in the waters of rivers and estuaries along the Gulf Coast from Mexico to Florida in the United States. This fish has been living on Earth for hundreds of millions of years, and they can reach more than 1 meter in length, and the longest alligator gar can even grow up to 3 meters in length and weigh 45 kg to 72 kg. The size of the alligator gar makes it a giant in freshwater.
The alligator gar has extremely sharp teeth and a strong bite. Moreover, their bodies are covered with hard-scale, super-hard enamel fish scales that are comparable in hardness to human teeth. This makes the alligator gar have few natural predators in the water. Alligator gars grow fast and eat a lot of food, eating up to 5% of their body weight in a day. As a result, once alligator gars are released into lakes or rivers, they prey on aquatic organisms and pose a serious threat to the local ecosystem. Theoretically, if there is just one alligator gar, it can eat the entire lake.
In August 2023, Ruzhou City, China, drained nearly 300,000 cubic meters of water from Yunchan Lake in the city's ** park, just to catch the "strange fish" alligator gar hiding in the lake. This incident has attracted widespread attention and heated discussions. Some people think it's worth it to catch a fish, while others think it's necessary because the alligator gar is too threatening.
In our country, the alligator gar is an invasive alien species, and they pose a deadly threat to native aquatic life. Therefore, when alligator gars are found in rivers, rivers and lakes, measures must be taken to catch them. In April this year, an alligator gar was also caught in the central lake of the Shipai Campus Cultural Square of South China Normal University. After considering the actual situation, the school decided to pump the pond and capture it.
The difficulty of fishing alligator gars is due to the fact that their teeth are so sharp that they can easily bite off the line. Therefore, it is actually a better way to use pumping to catch alligator gars. And, once the water is drained, we can make sure that we catch all the alligator gars in the lake, because we don't know for sure how many there are in the lake when there is water.
In nature, alligator gars have few natural predators, they grow fast and eat a lot. If an alligator gar is released in one body of water, it is likely to eat the fish throughout the water, causing serious damage to the local ecosystem. Therefore, for the alligator gar, an invasive alien species, we must take measures to prevent and control it to protect the aquatic biodiversity and ecological balance of our country.
In conclusion, as a large freshwater fish, the alligator gar has few natural predators in nature, but their survival also poses a serious threat to the local ecosystem. In order to protect our aquatic biodiversity and ecological balance, we must take measures to prevent and control alligator gars and prevent them from causing greater harm to native aquatic life. At the same time, we should also strengthen publicity and education for the public, raise people's awareness of ecological protection, and jointly care for the earth on which we live.