What The White Perch Looks Like
![Picture](/uploads/4/3/2/4/43244771/5140180.jpg?250)
The White Perch is a fish with silver scales, hints of a yellowish hue on the tail and fins, and can range from 8-15 inches long and 1 pound or less on average. The White Perch is a fish that can live in freshwater or saltwater. As you can see in the image to the right the fish wouldn't be that good to cook and eat because it isn't that big. This is one of many reasons that people should kill it immediately and not throw it back into the river for another fisherman to waste his bait on. The Chicagoland area must eradicate the White Perch.
White Perch Details
The common name for my invasive species is the White Perch and it’s scientific name is the Morone americana. It is native to the Atlantic Ocean Coastline, in the United States, all the way down to the middle of South Carolina but then you see the population lessen. This range also goes deeper into the states, covering up portions of the west side of the East Coast states. It even extends into mid North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Since this is the native land to the White Perch there are no rules or regulations on fishing for the species.
As seen in the image below, the main area infected by the Morone americana are the Great Lakes. Which, are surrounded by eight different states and the spread started from New York and into Lake Ontario. The spread of this invasive species seeped into the Chicago River and then the population really skyrocketed. The interesting thing about this though, that really shows human intervention is that they are appearing in Nebraska. This means that they were brought by humans and that is another reason that they have a good chance of spreading to even more states.
The History
The White Perch first appeared in the Great Lakes in the 1940s through the Erie and Welland canals. According to Wisconsin University’s Sea Grant Institute, “Unauthorized stocking has been a source of spread to inland waters in other states and White Perch have been transported through boating.” Fish stocking is breeding fish and then releasing them to increase the population in an area or drop them off in a place in which there are none of them. It is illegal because that is creating an invasive species. Below, the star is the Welland Canal which is how the White Perch spread to the other Great Lakes.