It didn't take them long to spot a school of fish. Stopping the boat, Berry started feeding a 600-foot-long vertical net into the water as Irwin maneuvered the boat to eventually form the net into a big circle.
With net in place, they then ran the boat in a circle, banging the hull with a wooden stick.
Immediately, carp started jumping out of the water and splashing back in.
A few lucky ones managed to jump outside of the net to live another day; some dived deep enough to get away.
When the flurry subsided, Berry began to pull the net up and pick carp out one by one.
Repeating this process one or two more times, they would have enough of a load to deliver to the nearby Kentucky Fish Center owned by Angie Yu, who also operates Two Rivers Fisheries, the largest Asian carp processor and exporter in the US.
Berry and Irwin, half-brothers originally from Washington, came to Kentucky to fish Asian carp in November last year.
Irwin is a commercial fisherman who has fished all over the world, from America to Africa, most recently in Alaska during the summer. For three months a year, he would work 20 to 22 hours a day off Alaska. The pay was good enough to cover a year's worth of living expenses, but the work was extremely hard.
He read an article on the internet one day about commercial fishing in Kentucky and Asian carp and immediately got interested.
"As a commercial fisherman, my interest is to fish up as much as I can," Irwin said.
Irwin and his family live in Costa Rica, his brother Berry was in Tennessee running heavy equipment for a living. The opportunity presented by Asian carp drew them both to Kentucky.
The brothers ran into some difficulties at first. They started with the wrong size net and couldn't catch a single fish. "We traded a car for a new net, and the rest is history," said Berry.
Their average haul of a day is between 3,000 and 7,000 pounds. Last month, they delivered almost 100,000 pounds. That's $16,000 earning between them, not counting the 5-cent subsidy from the state of Kentucky.
"We usually work 10 to 12 hours a day, seven days a week. If we can fish, we fish," said Berry.
Carp prices are cheap compared to other commercial fish, but the ease of catching large quantities of them makes up for the price difference, and it evens out, they said.
Irwin has already turned down a job in Alaska for the 2019 summer. Catching carp in Kentucky is a much easier life.
"Here the weather is warmer, the environment is more comfortable, and I get to sleep in my own bed at the end of the day," he said, adding that the earnings are comparable to what he would make in Alaska.
Irwin and Berry make decent money catching Asian carp, a fish that is so abundant in rivers and lakes that it has become a serious ecological problem for states like Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Illinois and Kentucky.
Ron Brooks, fisheries director at Kentucky's Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, said that the Asian carp are disrupting $1 billion worth of recreational and commercial businesses in western Kentucky alone.
"The Asian carp dominates the bio mass, they create problems for commercial and recreational fishing, boating and water skiing. It puts a lot of new business owners off when they talk to us about opening a business in Kentucky," Brooks said.
In some waterways, carp are so abundant that they jump out of the water into boats, sometimes hitting boaters and creating a nuisance. The massive schools of carp also present hazards to water skiers on popular recreational lakes. Commercial fishermen after other types of fish have to try hard not to catch them.
Asian carp are currently having an negative impact on estimated $7 billion various businesses in the US.
But He Lining, development manager at Two Rivers Fisheries, says Asian carp are not a problem, but an opportunity.
According to He, who is writing a book about Asian carp, the fish was introduced to the US by scientists in the late 1960s and early 1970s as an easy and cheap way to treat waste water.
However, once the Asian carp got into the river and lake systems, they flourished, and decades later, their populations have grown to the degree of creating an ecological disaster, crowding out other fish species competing for the rich food sources in the waterways.
"Asian carp is an important fish. It's an incredible fish and has been domesticated in Asia for more than 2,400 years," He said. "We consume more Asian carp than any other category of fish — Asian carp counts for 10 percent of global seafood consumption. We eat more silver carp than tuna and salmon combined.
"It is a problem here, but it's not garbage; it's a gold mine," He said.
In China, processed Asian carp is a $10 billion business, he said. "If we can save that $7 billion business by creating another $7 billion industry, that will be even better."
And that is exactly what the newly established International Fisheries Industrial Park is trying to do.
Officially opened on April 12 in Wickliffe, a small town of 700 people, the park is a private-public partnership aimed at reducing local Asian carp populations while creating a zerowaste food-production chain.
Immediately, carp started jumping out of the water and splashing back in.
A few lucky ones managed to jump outside of the net to live another day; some dived deep enough to get away.
When the flurry subsided, Berry began to pull the net up and pick carp out one by one.
Repeating this process one or two more times, they would have enough of a load to deliver to the nearby Kentucky Fish Center owned by Angie Yu, who also operates Two Rivers Fisheries, the largest Asian carp processor and exporter in the US.
Berry and Irwin, half-brothers originally from Washington, came to Kentucky to fish Asian carp in November last year.
![Justin Irwin (left) and James Berry deliver carp to the Kentucky Fish Center in Eddyville. The average weight of the fish is 5.5 to 6.8 kilograms. The largest seen at Two Rivers Fisheries was nearly 47 kg. [Photo by May Zhou/China Daily]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6JITix0CdFqq_4s4peXy-XugazQWBlEGvlxjRzq2o5X-eDzzy9niDAGOPyhYj7jNgUKPdMAbq1u1YoYh_RWrfLRTpmESkMek9XFzfIqbFsUi8XSgKtRLRC3B60dcJRtvY-e5ACjnGH0lGAhYNmxaJZyYS8FT01dGSZc-D2YIhJrgpqAYIA4q-YIzhpK9R/s1496/5ce40ef1a3104842e4aec62f.jpeg "Justin Irwin") |
| Justin Irwin (left) and James Berry deliver carp to the Kentucky Fish Center in Eddyville. The average weight of the fish is 5.5 to 6.8 kilograms. The largest seen at Two Rivers Fisheries was nearly 47 kg. [Photo by May Zhou/China Daily] |
Irwin is a commercial fisherman who has fished all over the world, from America to Africa, most recently in Alaska during the summer. For three months a year, he would work 20 to 22 hours a day off Alaska. The pay was good enough to cover a year's worth of living expenses, but the work was extremely hard.
He read an article on the internet one day about commercial fishing in Kentucky and Asian carp and immediately got interested.
"As a commercial fisherman, my interest is to fish up as much as I can," Irwin said.
Irwin and his family live in Costa Rica, his brother Berry was in Tennessee running heavy equipment for a living. The opportunity presented by Asian carp drew them both to Kentucky.
The brothers ran into some difficulties at first. They started with the wrong size net and couldn't catch a single fish. "We traded a car for a new net, and the rest is history," said Berry.
Their average haul of a day is between 3,000 and 7,000 pounds. Last month, they delivered almost 100,000 pounds. That's $16,000 earning between them, not counting the 5-cent subsidy from the state of Kentucky.
"We usually work 10 to 12 hours a day, seven days a week. If we can fish, we fish," said Berry.
Carp prices are cheap compared to other commercial fish, but the ease of catching large quantities of them makes up for the price difference, and it evens out, they said.
 |
Jiang Huiying drops a net into the water while fishing for Asian carp on Barkley Lake, Kentucky. [Photo by May Zhou/China Daily] |
Irwin has already turned down a job in Alaska for the 2019 summer. Catching carp in Kentucky is a much easier life.
"Here the weather is warmer, the environment is more comfortable, and I get to sleep in my own bed at the end of the day," he said, adding that the earnings are comparable to what he would make in Alaska.
Irwin and Berry make decent money catching Asian carp, a fish that is so abundant in rivers and lakes that it has become a serious ecological problem for states like Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Illinois and Kentucky.
Ron Brooks, fisheries director at Kentucky's Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, said that the Asian carp are disrupting $1 billion worth of recreational and commercial businesses in western Kentucky alone.
"The Asian carp dominates the bio mass, they create problems for commercial and recreational fishing, boating and water skiing. It puts a lot of new business owners off when they talk to us about opening a business in Kentucky," Brooks said.
In some waterways, carp are so abundant that they jump out of the water into boats, sometimes hitting boaters and creating a nuisance. The massive schools of carp also present hazards to water skiers on popular recreational lakes. Commercial fishermen after other types of fish have to try hard not to catch them.
Asian carp are currently having an negative impact on estimated $7 billion various businesses in the US.
But He Lining, development manager at Two Rivers Fisheries, says Asian carp are not a problem, but an opportunity.
According to He, who is writing a book about Asian carp, the fish was introduced to the US by scientists in the late 1960s and early 1970s as an easy and cheap way to treat waste water.
However, once the Asian carp got into the river and lake systems, they flourished, and decades later, their populations have grown to the degree of creating an ecological disaster, crowding out other fish species competing for the rich food sources in the waterways.
"Asian carp is an important fish. It's an incredible fish and has been domesticated in Asia for more than 2,400 years," He said. "We consume more Asian carp than any other category of fish — Asian carp counts for 10 percent of global seafood consumption. We eat more silver carp than tuna and salmon combined.
"It is a problem here, but it's not garbage; it's a gold mine," He said.
In China, processed Asian carp is a $10 billion business, he said. "If we can save that $7 billion business by creating another $7 billion industry, that will be even better."
And that is exactly what the newly established International Fisheries Industrial Park is trying to do.
Officially opened on April 12 in Wickliffe, a small town of 700 people, the park is a private-public partnership aimed at reducing local Asian carp populations while creating a zerowaste food-production chain.
 |
| Angie Yu (left), the Kentucky Fish Center owner, speaks at the opening ceremony of the International Fisheries Industrial Park in Wickliffe, Kentucky. [Photo by May Zhou/China Daily] |
The park is the brainchild of Angie Yu, founder and president of Two Rivers Fisheries.
Yu came up with the idea of cashing in on the battle against Asian carp, and in 2012 founded Two Rivers Fisheries in Wickliffe, Kentucky, just south of where the Mississippi and Ohio rivers converge.
Yu has a knack for turning "waste" into profit. She once developed a business of turning discarded crab and shrimp shells into glucosamine, a popular supplement used to treat joint pain.
In Iceland, where lumpfish were being discarded after their roe was removed for caviar, she exported the leftover fish to China.
Two Rivers Fisheries began processing and exporting carp in 2013. In 2018, the company processed about 2.6 million pounds of carp. This year, they processed 1.3 million pounds in the first quarter. Since starting operations, the company has processed a total of 10 million pounds of carp.
Two Rivers Fisheries is now the largest exporter of Asian carp in the United States and the No. 1 fish exporter by volume in Kentucky.
As the state was looking for innovative ways to attack the Asian carp problem, Kentucky awarded Yu the state's first-ever fish house contract in the fall of 2018. According to the deal, Yu's Kentucky Fish Center will buy Asian carp at a guaranteed price of 14 cents per pound, plus 5 cents per pound subsidy from the government.
All fish at the center will be auctioned off to interested buyers domestically or internationally. The sale will be overseen by Kentucky's Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources.
The state provided a secured $734,000 loan for fixed assets to help the fish center set up operations. Additional incentives will be awarded every year based on performance.
The fish center needs to reach certain goals: get 5 million pounds of Asian carp out of Kentucky waters in 2019 and increase that amount gradually to 20 million pounds a year by 2024. If those goals are met, the loan will be forgiven.
The entire program will cost Kentucky about $4 million. The government estimates that if the program were run by the state, it would cost $3.5 million a year and yield less carp.
The industrial park sits on 64 acres in Ballard County and is set up to make use of the carp acquired by the fish center. There are 12 tracts of land up for sale inside the park.
On opening day, eight tracts were already claimed, with only four left up for grabs. Most of the investors were from China.
Jiang Chenguang, an internet businessman from Guangxi, has set up United Fisheries Group to process carp into fish balls and fish cakes for export to China. Two Rivers Foods will process smoked fish — it has already shipped a smoker to the site.
Lakeside City is set up to process carp into salted fish. Investor Jiang Chuming will get into the net business. The existing Eco Fish hires fishermen to harvest carp, process fish and recycle fish waste into fertilizer.
Hotel and catering businessman Zhu Hongwei from Jiangsu province made the decision on opening day to buy one track for food processing. "I will decide to process fi sh into exactly what later," Zhu said. Investor An Fengjie bought a track and, like Zhu, has yet to decide what exactly to do in the carp bonanza.
Xu Hao runs a successful environmental business and specializes in recycling waste materials in Yunnan province. He registered Novaland Group in Kentucky to turn all the discarded fish parts into fertilizer for the US market. This helps to complete the fish processing chain and make the park waste free.
Novaland Group is Xu's first investment in the US. His estimated total investment is around $500,000. "We will solve the industrial park's garbage problem by eliminating the fish odor and recycling the fish waste into fertilizer to make the park a healthy and safe place," Xu said.
The industrial park is getting a warm welcome from local officials, many of whom attended the opening ceremony. Ballard County Judge Todd Cooper praised Yu for "taking lemons and making them into lemonade".
Yu came up with the idea of cashing in on the battle against Asian carp, and in 2012 founded Two Rivers Fisheries in Wickliffe, Kentucky, just south of where the Mississippi and Ohio rivers converge.
Yu has a knack for turning "waste" into profit. She once developed a business of turning discarded crab and shrimp shells into glucosamine, a popular supplement used to treat joint pain.
In Iceland, where lumpfish were being discarded after their roe was removed for caviar, she exported the leftover fish to China.
Two Rivers Fisheries began processing and exporting carp in 2013. In 2018, the company processed about 2.6 million pounds of carp. This year, they processed 1.3 million pounds in the first quarter. Since starting operations, the company has processed a total of 10 million pounds of carp.
Two Rivers Fisheries is now the largest exporter of Asian carp in the United States and the No. 1 fish exporter by volume in Kentucky.
As the state was looking for innovative ways to attack the Asian carp problem, Kentucky awarded Yu the state's first-ever fish house contract in the fall of 2018. According to the deal, Yu's Kentucky Fish Center will buy Asian carp at a guaranteed price of 14 cents per pound, plus 5 cents per pound subsidy from the government.
All fish at the center will be auctioned off to interested buyers domestically or internationally. The sale will be overseen by Kentucky's Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources.
The state provided a secured $734,000 loan for fixed assets to help the fish center set up operations. Additional incentives will be awarded every year based on performance.
The fish center needs to reach certain goals: get 5 million pounds of Asian carp out of Kentucky waters in 2019 and increase that amount gradually to 20 million pounds a year by 2024. If those goals are met, the loan will be forgiven.
The entire program will cost Kentucky about $4 million. The government estimates that if the program were run by the state, it would cost $3.5 million a year and yield less carp.
The industrial park sits on 64 acres in Ballard County and is set up to make use of the carp acquired by the fish center. There are 12 tracts of land up for sale inside the park.
On opening day, eight tracts were already claimed, with only four left up for grabs. Most of the investors were from China.
Jiang Chenguang, an internet businessman from Guangxi, has set up United Fisheries Group to process carp into fish balls and fish cakes for export to China. Two Rivers Foods will process smoked fish — it has already shipped a smoker to the site.
Lakeside City is set up to process carp into salted fish. Investor Jiang Chuming will get into the net business. The existing Eco Fish hires fishermen to harvest carp, process fish and recycle fish waste into fertilizer.
Hotel and catering businessman Zhu Hongwei from Jiangsu province made the decision on opening day to buy one track for food processing. "I will decide to process fi sh into exactly what later," Zhu said. Investor An Fengjie bought a track and, like Zhu, has yet to decide what exactly to do in the carp bonanza.
Xu Hao runs a successful environmental business and specializes in recycling waste materials in Yunnan province. He registered Novaland Group in Kentucky to turn all the discarded fish parts into fertilizer for the US market. This helps to complete the fish processing chain and make the park waste free.
Novaland Group is Xu's first investment in the US. His estimated total investment is around $500,000. "We will solve the industrial park's garbage problem by eliminating the fish odor and recycling the fish waste into fertilizer to make the park a healthy and safe place," Xu said.
The industrial park is getting a warm welcome from local officials, many of whom attended the opening ceremony. Ballard County Judge Todd Cooper praised Yu for "taking lemons and making them into lemonade".
 |
| James Berry lands a carp on Barkley Lake, Kentucky. [Photo by May Zhou/China Daily] |
Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development Commissioner Erran Persley praised Yu's dedication in bringing a cluster of fish industries into the area.
"As we are negotiating at the federal level, the important thing is to make sure relationships between provinces and states keep moving and business relationships keep growing. This project is an excellent example of the fact that at the sub-nation level, we can come together and make business happen between our two nations," Persley said.
Kentucky's fisheries director Brooks has high hopes that the park's incentive program will help reduce the Asian carp population, and commercial fishermen should not worry about their prospects as far as Asian carp are concerned.
"As we fish them down, we will help the industry to go to the rivers. There are so many carp that we are not able to fish them all up in our lifetime," said Brooks.
Currently there are more than 40 commercial fishermen dedicated to catching Asian carp in western Kentucky. The long-term prospects offered by the overgrowth of Asian carp are exactly why James Berry and Justin Irwin think that their job is secure until they want to retire.
"We have a big dream," said Berry. "We want a bigger boat. We confidently think we can do anywhere from 30,000 to 50,000 pounds a day with a purse seine (net) because of what we see out there. The schools of fish are massive; the problem is to get around them."
A purse seine is a large wall of net with floats along the top and a lead line threaded through the bottom. Once a school of fish is located, a skiff encircles the school with the net. The lead line is then pulled in to close the net on the bottom, preventing fish from escaping by swimming downward.
"The way we are fishing now, we are setting the net off at our bow," said Berry. "We are missing fish because we are not going fast enough."
Berry said they are saving up and plan to reinvest 100 percent of their money in equipment. A bigger capacity boat would also reduce their down time. Currently, they have to deliver two to three times a day because their boat can only hold up to 3,000 pounds of fish.
"If you come in to deliver, it takes at least an hour, that's just an hour we lost off the water. The thing about the fish is that once you find them, you've got to stay on top of them. They change what they do," Berry said.
Irwin said that every day the fish seem to like different temperatures and different depths of water. They move around and have a lot of different traits. He is applying all of his fishing skills learned all over the world to find better ways to fish carp in Kentucky.
The brothers are not the only ones lured to Kentucky by Asian carp. Lin Jiantong and his wife Jiang Huiying moved from Atlanta to the area to fish Asian carp about a year ago.
The couple were working in the kitchens of Chinese restaurants for a living in Atlanta. Learning about the possibility of making a living by fishing, Lin did not hesitate to try a new lifestyle. Growing up along the coast in Fujian province, Lin knows a thing or two about fishing.
"I like it much better here. I am not working in a small and crowded space. I don't have to follow anyone's orders. It is so much nicer to be in the open water with fresh air. If I don't feel like working, I take a day off. It's great," Lin said.
The couple are not catching as much carp as Irwin and Berry, but Lin said they make money equivalent to what they made in Atlanta.
MAY ZHOU CHINA DAILY
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