Invasive carps (bighead, black, grass, and silver carps) escaped aquaculture and entered the mississippi river during floods in the 1970S

Since that time they have advanced throughout the mississippi basin, including into the ohio river. Our proposed work is in collaboration with the ohio river invasive carp partnership and our primary objective is to monitor the ohio river mainstem and key tributaries for evidence of spawning success in areas upstream of the markland DAM where there have been only sporadic observations of adult invasive carps. This area marks the leading edge of the invasion and therefore is important to monitor so that rapid response and sustained management actions to reduce the probability of successful advancement and establishment. We propose to continue our ichthyoplankton and juvenile surveys in support of the early life stages project, we will also continue our work applying community size-spectra (CSS) to fish assemblage data (i.e. community data) to identify targets for invasive carp harvest, this year we will also work collaboratively with the USFWS carterville office to apply CSS to the hydroacoustic data that that office collects. Finally, and also part of the early detection project, DR. Rota will lead on-going efforts to utilize existing monitoring and removal data to develop occupancy models across all life stages of invasive carp to optimize sampling effort for detection of carp at all life stages.