Obama administration has decided to spend approx $51.5 million during this year to protect the Great Lakes from all the Asian carp, including first-time planning of the administration, during which it held water sampling to determine the destruction levels so far and the foothold caused in the lakes by the destructive fish till date, says officials of Obama Administration on Thursday.

Also, the procedure helped the federal officials to determine the levels up to which the bigheaded silver carp could have destroyed the vulnerable sections of Lakes Michigan, Erie and Huron.

The updated strategy by the administration includes some more procedures including stepped-up trapping and netting in rivers like Illinois, field tests of scents to attract and then capture carp, an acoustic water gun to scare carp and also monitoring the working of the electric barrier that has been set to block the carp’s path to Lake Michigan.

U. S. authorities have listed Asian carp as invasive species in the U. S., which are present in high numbers in the Mississippi River Basin. Great Lakes is a region with very small number of individuals thus to keep it same way especially for the carp, fisheries managers have started drawing a line in the sand to restrict any more entry in the region.

Asian carp is a wide term that includes several groups of related species like the bighead i. e. Hypophthalmichthys nobilis, silver i. e. Hypophthalmichthys molitrix, grass i. e. Ctenopharyngodon idella, and black carp i. e. Mylopharyngodon piceus.

“Any and all attempts to prevent the fish from entering the Great Lakes is appreciated”, said Mr. Van Kesteren.”The threat to fish species in the Great Lakes is real. Fortunately, the U. S. government is on top of the matter and is taking steps to try and deal with it”, he said.