State fish biologists were looking for Asian carp.
What they found, last week in the North Shore Channel in Lincolnwood, was something much better: a spotted gar, an ancient fish that has never before been seen in Chicago waterways, according to records.
“AWESOME!” wrote Solomon David, an expert in gars and other primitive fishes with the Shedd Aquarium, in spreading the news via Twitter. “REALLY excited!”
“It’s a cool fish. It’s underappreciated,” David said in an interview Friday. The spotted gar, he explained, is pretty picky about its habitat, requiring clear water and ample vegetation. The presence of the fish in the channel “suggests that perhaps there’s some habitat improvement in some of these area waterways,” David said.
Last Monday, Department of Natural Resources specialists were making a routine check for Asian carp between Pratt and Touhy avenues in the channel, which connects the North Branch of the Chicago River to Lake Michigan.
They do this via “electrofishing,” sending electric current into the water to stun the fish population for sampling and measurement. No carp rose to the surface, but the gar did.
Before releasing the fish back into the water, the DNR team snapped a few photos, including one of fisheries biologist Frank Jakubicek holding the roughly 21/2-foot, slender, long-snouted animal, tan with brown spots, said Steve Pescitelli, a stream specialist with the department.
“We haven’t found any Asian carp there, but we monitor it just to make sure they’re not there,” Pescitelli said.
“It seems like many of these urban rivers, they have been cleaning up, and we’re seeing species move in we haven’t seen before. That’s true of the Des Plaines River, as well.”
In that river, near Riverside, he said, the department has recently found two “clean-water fish we hadn’t documented that far upstream”: a silver redhorse, which is a species of sucker, and a rosyface shiner.
Although they haven’t been seen in Chicago, spotted gar populations have been documented downstate and in Lake Michigan in the vicinity of the St. Joseph River.
David and Pescitelli said they don’t know if the Lincolnwood gar reached the channel through the waterway system, which would require navigating locks, or entered via Lake Michigan.
And they caution that the finding will be more telling if other spotted gars are found.
“We don’t know if there’s many of them in there or if we just got lucky and got the only one,” Pescitelli said.
David, who did his dissertation on gars, said the Shedd has spotted gars on display, “but it’s neat to see there’s wild spotted gars in Chicago too.”
Twitter @SteveKJohnson
