St. Alberta culls unwanted finned tenants from retention pond

ST. ALBERT Workers have dipped nets and a naturally occurring chemical into a storm water retention pond near Edmonton in a bid to kill thousands of unwanted goldfish that have made the water body home.

Officials say the aquatic invaders are the result of goldfish reproducing after people released their unwanted pets into the wild or flushed them down the toilet.

Leah Kongsrude, St. Albert’s environment director, says she’s seen captured goldfish up to 30 centimetres in length, compared to ones sold by pet stores that measure only about two centimetres.

Kongsrude says goldfish are hardy and can out-compete naturally occurring species for food.

Crews used nets on Tuesday to remove the reddish-gold swimmers and also applied the chemical, Rotenone, which is used to remove unwanted fish species from fresh water.

The pond will be checked later on to determine whether the cull was successful, and workers will also watch another nearby body of water to determine whether goldfish have taken up residence there.

Kongsrude said the city is lucky the fish are just in the pond and not in the Sturgeon River, which flows through St. Albert.

“We pumped this pond down and froze it right to the bottom in the winter and they were back in the spring. So they can live with very limited oxygen and low water temperatures.”