With their open boat skipping like a silvery stone along the Illinois River, the fish experts scan the mocha waters for what they call "incoming." Bodies hunched in anticipation, they look left and right, front and behind; you never know, they say.
"If you put your guard down, you could easily get seriously injured," says Kevin Irons, one of the researchers, who once got hit in the head. A colleague, Matt O'Hara, nods in empathy from behind the mesh netting that protects the boat's driver from being knocked unconscious.
"I got hit in the back once," he says. "It left an imprint of a fish."
A fish?
A first-time visitor to the river initially wonders whether Mr. O'Hara and Mr. Irons have spent too much time in the sun. Until their boat slows down, that is, and fish by the dozens, some weighing 10 pounds or more, explode out of the water as though shot from the cannons of an underwater armada.
The agitated fish, who perceive the boat as a predator, rocket like slimy torpedoes through the air, against the hull of the boat, into the netting, onto the floor. Your correspondent takes one in the leg and your photographer takes one in the midsection, but both fare better than the college biology major who had her lip split last week.
Though awesome and even unnerving to behold, the fishy fusillade is all too common on the Illinois River - and it is not good. These are Asian carp, a ravenous, rapidly multiplying invasive species that in the last decade has threatened the well-being of native fish, affected commercial fishing and transformed the typical workday for these researchers into a scene from "Apocalypse Now." The Illinois, a working river that supports both churning coal barges and great blue herons, is one link in a chain of waterways connecting Lake Michigan to the Gulf of Mexico. And the thought of Asian carp invading the Great Lakes haunts the dreams of environmentalists, business owners and government officials. That fishy downturned mouth; those unblinking, low-set eyes.