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Fishcide warning for Kandy lake: Alligator Gar can eat up all other fish in one month
Kandy lake: ‘Alligator Gar’ lurking in the water
How did the ‘Alligator Gar’, a huge freshwater fish largely found
in North America, come to Kandy Lake?
The environmentalists want a probe conducted to find an answer to this question, as this fish is said to be posing an existential threat to fish endemic to the lake and the lake’s environment. Some say it could eat up all the other fish in the lake within one month.
Alligator Gar with a crocodilian head, a wide snout and razor-sharp teeth, is also found in some South Asian countries.
The environmentalists want to know who introduced the alien fish to the lake without the permission of the Irrigation Department, which manages the lake.
The predator fish, the largest fish in the gar family, not only eats small fish but also the large ones and birds around the lake. The fish is scientifically known as the Atratosteus spatula. Widely found in North America, it is reared in aquariums and fed with small fish.
The crocodile fish, which can grow up to ten feet long, according to sources, was found in 1829 by Georges Cuvier, and since then, much research has been done about it. It is a flatbed fish and could stay for days undisturbed on the river bed, according to research.
Peradeniya University environmentalists say immediate steps should be taken to relocate the fish, while a thorough probe should be conducted to find out how it came to the lake, who did it, and for what.
Constructed in 1807 by King Sri Wickrama Rajasinghe, the last king of Kandy, Kandy Lake now hosts a diverse range of fish native to Sri Lanka. These fish were introduced to the lake after it was built by flooding a former paddy field. The lake overlooks the Dalada Maligawa.
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