Groups go on offensive against Brays Bayou invasive fish

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Brays Bayou brims with aquatic surprises - some pleasant, others not agreeable at all and some a mix of both.

One of the more than a dozen major waterways that vein Harris County and give Houston its "Bayou City" nickname, Brays Bayou and its tributaries carry water down almost 125 miles of channels, flowing east from its upper reaches in Fort Bend County through Missouri City and Stafford, Bellaire, West University Place and Houston to its joining with Buffalo Bayou in the middle of the Port of Houston.

It is a wholly urban waterway, its course bent, straightened and otherwise shaped by human hands, much of it little more than an unattractive, cement-lined ditch passing through the concrete and steel landscape of the nation's fourth most populous city.

But the bayou and the aquatic ecosystem it supports somehow endure.

"You'd be amazed at what you can see and the fish you can catch in that bayou," said Mark Marmon, a Bellaire resident who has for 25 years stalked the banks of Brays Bayou, carrying a fly rod and mostly targeting what he calls "one of the most challenging, strongest, hardest-fighting fish you can find, anywhere."

Armored catfish, common in the aquarium trade and irresponsibly released by owners, are one of the non-native, invasive fish thriving in Houston bayous﻿. Armored catfish, common in the aquarium trade and irresponsibly released by owners, are one of the non-native, invasive fish thriving in Houston bayous﻿. Photo: Shannon Tompkins Photo: Shannon Tompkins Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Groups go on offensive against Brays Bayou invasive fish 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

Brays Bayou is home to almost 50 species of native fish, including such well-known game fish as largemouth bass, crappie, several species of sunfish and catfish.

But the bayou also has become home to at least a half-dozen non-native fish - invasive species that cause significant ecologic and economic damage. One of those invasive fish -Asian grass carp - is the primary quarry Marmon and many other urban anglers target in Brays Bayou and Houston's other urban waterways.

"It's an incredible fish," Marmon said of the bayou's grass carp, which can grow to as much as 20 pounds or more although most are less than 10. "They can be as hard to catch as any freshwater trout, and they are amazingly powerful; they just don't give up."

And there are a lot of grass carp, as well as several other non-native invasive fish, in Brays Bayou.

Significant damage

Texas Parks and Wildlife Department fisheries biologists sampling Houston's urban waterways have documented thriving populations of grass carp, armored catfish (plecostomus, a South American species whose juvenile stage is sold in the aquarium trade as "algae eaters") and two species of tilapia in the city's bayous.

Those non-native fish didn't get there by themselves.

Grass carp, which, as their name implies, have a voracious appetite for aquatic vegetation, were surreptitiously imported and released in Texas waters at least 30 years ago by folks looking to control nuisance vegetation in private lakes and ponds. (Possession and release of fertile grass carp is prohibited in Texas, and has been for decades.) Flooding allowed the contraband grass carp to escape, enter rivers and bayous where they have developed self-sustaining populations.

Tilapia followed the same route, escaping private waters and entering public waterways.

Armored catfish entered - and continue entering - waterways through irresponsible actions of pet owners who release the fish when they outgrow aquariums or owners tire of the fish.

The result has been significant damage to what's left of Brays bayou's aquatic ecosystem.

Tilapia directly compete with native fish for food and habitat. Tilapia are especially problematic for native fish such as bass and sunfish, said Alice Best, TPWD inland fisheries biologist.

Armored catfish - and the Brays Bayou system swarms with the shovel-headed, hard-scaled, alien catfish - also compete directly with native fish. And the armored catfish have the additional negative of being communal "cavity nesters." They burrow into the banks in the shallows, undermining and weakening those banks, resulting in sloughing, erosion and siltation, causing both environmental damage to the fishery and economic damage to waterways such as Brays Bayou whose banks are maintained to improve the waterway's ability to handle flood waters.

Major problem

But it is grass carps' voracious appetite for aquatic vegetation that has focused considerable recent attention on the issue of invasive fish in Houston's bayous.

In an effort to improve Brays Bayou's water quality and its ability to handle flooding, government organizations including Harris County Flood Control District and City of Houston have been creating wetlands such as retention ponds along the bayou. These man-made wetlands and the aquatic vegetation in them are designed to greatly improve water quality.

"When you have water flowing and filtering through a wetland with aquatic vegetation, it can reduce bacterial levels by as much as 400 percent," said Deborah January-Bevers, president of conservation group Houston Wilderness. "The vegetation also filters out sediments. You end up with much higher water quality."

The wetlands also can help buffer flooding by dampening current velocity and absorbing some of the floodwaters.

When efforts to establish aquatic vegetation in the wetlands in parks along Brays Bayou failed miserably, the culprit was easily discovered.

"It was grass carp," January-Bevers said. The vegetarian fish were feasting on the aquatic vegetation, destroying the stands and negating the expensive efforts. Grass carp, it seems, are the aquatic equivalent of feral hogs.

The impact of invasive fish in the Brays Bayou system and a desire across a wide range of interests to address the issue triggered creation of a partnership among a diverse group with ties to Brays Bayou. The collaborative effort, appropriately named the Carp and Armored-catfish Removal Plan (CARP) Task Force, brought together groups and government entities including the Texas Fly Fishers of Houston, Houston Wilderness, City of Houston, Harris County Flood Control District, Houston Parks and Recreation, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Rice University and others.

The result of the collaborative effort is the inaugural Brays Bayou Invasive Fish Round-Up and Carp-A-Thon, a combination education/instruction event and fishing tournament. The event is set for Saturday at Willow Waterhole Park, a 300-acre park along Willow Waterhole Bayou, a tributary of Brays Bayou. The park is located at 5300 Dryad Road in southwest Houston.

The fishing tournament, which has a $20 entry for adults but is free to anglers younger than 13 and older than 65, focuses exclusively on exotic species in the Brays Bayou system. Tournament hours are 10 a.m.-2 p.m.

The event at the park will include fishing instruction and demonstrations and informational booths and seminars.

More information on the event can be found at willowwaterhole.org

Raising awareness

None of the groups involved in the event expect the tournament to significantly reduce the bayou's population of invasive fish. But any of the invasive fish taken from the bayou will benefit the waterway, and raising the profile of the problem will be beneficial.

"This is a really great opportunity to raise awareness of the problems invasive species and educate the public," January-Bevers of Houston Wilderness said, adding future events could expand the program.

"There are so many people out there who have no idea the problems these fish can cause or what an undiscovered resource Brays Bayou is."