It can survive in a ditch. It can breathe air. It has sharp teeth. It would probably eat your favorite game fish.
A second northern snakehead, a fish originally from China, southern Siberia and North Korea, has been caught in the Duck Creek area in Wayne County, Missouri. The first was caught in 2019 in a ditch in Dunklin County, in the Missouri bootheel.
According to Angela Sokolowski, the Invasive Species Coordinator for the Missouri Department of Conservation, the fish was about a year old. Northern snakeheads are predators.
“They are a non-native invasive species which means they’re really aggressive,” Sokolowski said. “They’re highly reproductive and they don’t belong in the natural systems that we have, and so they have the ability to alter the food web and those aquatic ecosystems.”
This fish is a predator, and its prey of choice are Missouri’s game fish. Snakeheads also have been found to eat small birds.
“Snakeheads are known aggressive predators and they’re large fish,” Sokolowski said. “They eat a lot, which means they’re competing with a lot of our native fish for food resources and they are also using a lot of our native fish for food resources.”
Maryland is one state that has a high population of these fish. They first appeared in 2002 and have established themselves in Maryland’s water bodies. According to Joseph Love, the Fisheries and Programs Manager for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, northern snakeheads caught in Maryland have been as long as 3 feet and can weigh up to 20 pounds.
Something that is very different about northern snakeheads is their anatomy that gives them abilities that surpass other fish.
According to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s website, “They have a suprabranchial organ, or primitive lung for respiration, which allows them to breathe air and survive out of water for up to four days, if they stay moist.”
Northern snakeheads can “walk” on land, “it is more like a slither,” Sokolowski said. They mainly go across land whenever they are looking for a new territory, they don’t go on land unless they have to.
Abilities to breathe, walk and multiply
Snakeheads are also highly reproductive. According to the Chesapeake Bay Program website, “female snakeheads reach sexual maturity at two years old and can lay as many as 15,000 eggs one to five times per year.”
The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary — a place where ocean tides meet the mouth of a freshwater stream — in the United States. Northern snakeheads have established themselves there, causing the eradication of these fish to be unlikely.
“We switched our management strategy to control and regulation,” Love said, “trying to minimize impact in our ecosystem. We did that by encouraging harvest without the goal of eradication, so we began looking at what the impacts are and began encouraging people to harvest, to fish for food. And working with the Maryland Department of Environment and Maryland Department of Agriculture to try and support a harvest based fishery, a consumption based fishery.”
While the snakehead is an environmental fright, it should be a fisherman’s delight. This fish is theorized to have come to the country as a source of fresh food.
According to the website Reel Game, “Snakehead meat is very flexible and is delicious prepared in many different ways. You’ll find that snakehead has a firm flaky texture. As for the taste, you will usually find that snakehead has almost no fishy flavor at all.”
Controlling the population
Since the snakehead appeared in Missouri, the Department of Conservation is starting to work on ways to keep the environment safe.
“We are currently developing a management plan which will determine how much monitoring and control efforts we actually need to take,” Sokolowski said, “We’re also trying to do more public education on snakehead awareness and letting folks know that they may encounter snakeheads. We are also with the fish and wildlife service to coordinate our efforts.”
The population of northern snakeheads in Missouri is unknown.
“It can be difficult and time consuming to get really good population data on fish since you have to capture fish,” Sokolowski said, “you can’t automatically see them.”
If an angler catches a northern snakehead, the MDC asks for a few things. According to the MDC website:
- Make sure it’s a snakehead. Northern snakeheads can be confused with the native bowfin. Snakeheads have a snake-like appearance with a much longer anal fin than the bowfin.
- Do not release the fish or throw it on the bank, as it could migrate back to the water or to a new waterbody. Remember this fish is an airbreather and can live a considerable amount of time out of the water.
- Kill the fish by severing the head or gutting it.
- Photograph the fish so the species can be positively identified.
- Report any sightings of the fish to MDC’s Southeast Regional Office at 573-290-5858.
