Gi-Normous Goldfish On The Loose In Lake Tahoe

Forget about flushing these goldfish down the toilet. Reuters is reporting giant goldfish weighing as much as four pounds and “measuring up to 1-1/2 feet in length” are finding their way to Lake Tahoe:

“These fish are competing with the native fish, and that’s a big part of the problem,” said Heather Segale, spokeswoman for the Tahoe Environmental Research Center at the University of California at Davis.

A group of researchers from Davis, the University of Nevada at Reno, and the fish and wildlife departments of both California and Nevada were the first to study the presence of goldfish in Lake Tahoe, beginning an annual survey in 2006.

In 2011, the group began a project to reduce the number of goldfish and other non-native fish from the lake through “electrofishing,” dangling metal wires from the bottom of a boat to stun fish with electrical current, then capturing the fish as they float to the surface.