Carp as Villains and Victims

This essay on the complexities of invasive carp management, fish liveliness, and narratives of belonging in the American West is part of the Companion Species series, which investigates a complex, interconnected, and co-constituted web of beyond-human relating. Series editors: Tessa Archambault, Dylan Couch, Kuhelika Ghosh, Ellie Kincaid, and Bri Meyer.

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On a sunny Thursday morning in May, I drive the curvature of Utah Lake, the largest freshwater lake in Utah and the third largest west of the Mississippi River. Spanning 148 square miles, the lake lives at the center of Utah Valley, framed by rapidly growing cities with a total population of over 700,000 people. The Wasatch Mountains border the eastern edge of Utah Valley, and Lake Mountain marks its west side.

Fifty miles north, connected to Utah Lake through the Jordan River, is the more famous Great Salt Lake. This uncanny connection—a freshwater lake sending water north to a saline lake—forms a critical loop in the abundant watersheds of the Wasatch Oasis. The habitat inside and around Utah Lake also supports a massive community of more-than-human life: migratory birds, invertebrates, algae, cyanobacteria, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and fish. There are eighteen species of fish in the water, but today I’m only interested in one: the common carp.  

Headed away from Saratoga Springs, my busy home city on the western lakeshore, traffic soon thins to a few gravel pit trucks. I roll down all the windows to let in the cool rush of spring air, turn up the vintage sounds of Gordon Lightfoot, and ignore the speed limit. Soon, I turn off the asphalt onto a badly maintained dirt road managed by the Bureau of Land Management. This spot is landmarked by two knobbed hills known as The Knolls. The taller hill is scarred with off-highway vehicle trails, and the sagebrush fields below are divided into camping sites. Off to the right, I pass a battered RV parked in one of the spots, its door open with a black dog standing watch. 

I park in a gravel lot behind the hills. A couple of signs warn that the area is off-limits to target shooting—both predictably pock-marked with shotgun spray. I pull on waterproof boots, put my camera around my neck, and head down the steeply sloped path to the lakeshore. The invasive phragmites reeds are thick here, clumped into a large, golden crescent along the wide, rounded cove. The water is immediately accessible, its presence mighty and energetic. Today, Utah Lake is calm, pulsing slightly from a breeze. The surface of the lake absorbs the colors of the sky, a blurred, mirrored watercolor of lush blue and cotton white. 

I hear the carp before I see them, the morning quiet broken by sporadic splashing. 

Following the sounds, I find a large hoard of fish in the shallows among young tamarisk stalks. I suppose now is the moment I should say that fish creep me the hell out—especially when I’m standing in water with swimming, thrashing, beast-like lake fish. It’s a basal, instinctual repulsion; my skin crawls, my deep gut pulls inward, and I want to flee back to dry land.  

Yet every spring, I purposely step into the shallows of Utah Lake to spend time surrounded by the frenzy of the carp spawn. More than simply being drawn to a cool thing to witness and document for my work as a Utah Lake scholar and advocate, I’m compelled to stand here with fat carp swimming over my boots because these fish are central to the story of this place. In most versions of that story, they are cast as the ghastly villain, the monster that brought destruction: one breed of fish, a Godzilla-sized ecosystem problem. A graphic often shared at water conferences and summits mimics a Wild West “Wanted” poster, joking that carp are “wanted for crimes against Utah Lake.”  

The Disabled Ecology of Utah Lake

As defined by Sunaura Taylor in her book, Utah Lake is a “disabled ecology.” Once an abundant wonderland of natural resources that sustained Great Basin Native peoples for thousands of years, Utah Valley’s environment suffered several rounds of serious degradation after the arrival of Mormon Anglo-American settlers in the mid-nineteenth century. Major water diversions for irrigation, dumping of industrial waste and raw sewage, destruction of wetlands and marshes, overgrazing of livestock, clear-cutting of forests, and the introduction of foreign species of plants and fish all impacted every aspect of the local ecology.  

Utah Lake is a naturally shallow, endorheic, or terminal lake with no outlet to an ocean, filled by the snowmelt rivers of the Wasatch Mountains. Historically, the lake was a wetland oasis, center of biodiversity, and vibrant fishery. In the summer of 1849, a few months after 149 settlers founded Fort Utah (currently called Provo), Mormon leader Parley P. Pratt spent a day at the lake and wrote, “I was at Utah Lake last week and of all the fisheries I ever saw, that exceeds all. I saw thousands caught by hand.” Thirteen native fish species thrived in the lake at that time and provided an abundance of nutritious food for the Timpanogos and Ute people, as well as fish-eating wildlife. Three of those thirteen fish species are endemic to Utah Lake and found nowhere else in the world.

Today, only two of those indigenous species survive, and the third, the Utah Lake Sculpin, tragically went extinct during the Dust Bowl disaster of the 1930s when the lake dried up to puddles. Fifteen non-native species have been introduced over time, including the common carp.

The carp were introduced in 1883 as part of a nationwide effort by the U.S. Commission of Fish and Fisheries program. Native fisheries all over the country were devastated by settler overfishing and water diversions; carp provided an easy option to boost food sources. Two hundred baby carp were released into Utah Lake—the beginning of the end for natural hydrological functions.

During spawning, when the water warms and sunlight is strong, the breeding-age carp (three to five years old) leave the body of the lake to gather in the shallow water and wetland plants near shore. Here they release and fertilize their eggs.

To me, standing above it all, breathing air in my human way, a voyeur during these mating rituals, it’s complete chaos. The adult carp, which average in size around eighteen inches long and eight pounds, thrash and bash around each other in unpredictable intervals. And not just a few of them—dozens are at work around my ankles, mostly oblivious to my intrusion. Sometimes the mosh-pit moments push fish over and under each other, a few thrust above the surface so that I get a glimpse of their glassy eyes and flashy scales. Fins snap, tails whip, and somewhere in there, the next generation is created. It must be exhausting. I’ve seen fish barely moving, seemingly spent, and others with bloody injuries. Carp sex is no joke.  

Despite my instinctual revulsion, I’m enthralled by the aquatic madness. But what I can view from the surface is only an inkling of the chaos the carp are creating beneath the surface.

Carp are bottom feeders: they disturb sediment and rip out vegetation as they search for food. Their feeding process is similar to the way chickens scratch and dig for bugs. Just as a few hens can destroy a garden in about ten minutes, the carp wreak havoc. Their destruction is reminiscent of another creature too: as settlers changed every aspect of the land around Utah Lake, carp did the same to the landscape inside the water.  

Invasive Species, Permanent Residents

By the early 2000s, carp accounted for “an overwhelming 91 percent of the total fish biomass in the lake.” In a shallow, wetland lake, the submerged aquatic vegetation systems are essential to water quality and the survival of native fish that breed, eat, and seek protection in the plants. So, the loss of these plants through the habits of so many carp had cascading negative consequences. As the carp prospered, the native June Sucker suffered. June Suckers, one of those fish found only in Utah Lake, were placed on the endangered species list in 1986, with less than one thousand surviving fish. June Suckers most likely numbered in the millions before settlement.  

A multi-agency restoration effort to save the June Suckers began exterminating carp in February 2010. By 2019, the project had pulled twenty-nine million pounds of carp from the lake. Some of the biomass was used as agricultural fertilizer, and some was dumped into the landfill. On February 3, 2021, the June Sucker was downlisted from endangered to threatened, one of only a handful of fish to make this positive leap. It is a triumph, no doubt, but one that comes at a great cost.  

Today, as the ill-fated carp attempt to reproduce around me, I wonder about those original two hundred babies of 1883. Bred to populate Utah Lake or kidnapped from their own domestic habitat, the carp have thrived in truly impressive ways, persistent and resilient, making themselves at home. It’s hard not to admire them despite all the ecological disruption they caused; it’s hard not to mourn what was lost.

Feeling a little braver after more than an hour in the water with the carp, I squat down to get a closer look. From a distance, carp look gray, but under the sun, they are actually a blend of iridescent metallics. Gold and silver scales are layered in a lovely, scalloped pattern, and the fins are a rich copper trimmed in pewter gray. The dorsal fins snap in a beguiling, almost mechanical way, and the strong tail fins easily splash water into my face when I shift my weight and spook one of them.  

Western culture assigns very little meaning to the lives of fish, especially one as ubiquitous as common carp. Fish have no feelings, and fish don’t feel pain. They’re just fish, after all. Does it matter that millions of them are dying?

Up close and personal with the spawning group, it’s hard to subscribe to those dismissive ideas. There’s intelligence and energy here; there’s life trying to do what it does.  

Are these fish the villain or the victim in this story?  

Lulu Miller writes, “The work of good science is to try to peer beyond the ‘convenient’ lines we draw over nature. To peer beyond intuition, where something wilder lives. To know that in every organism at which you gaze, there is complexity you will never comprehend.” Local Utah narratives simplify the culpability of carp by drawing suspect lines over the ecosystem and its history. But in this lake valley, my life depends on and is intimately linked to the water, which means I’m a companion to fish—all of them. Human dependency on the water may manifest differently, but it is no less than that of the fish’s dependency. The lowly value assigned to carp hides this messy entanglement and allows for their destruction with little to no empathy from the local community. 

Another carp swims close to me, gracefully undulating in the water. I almost reach out my hand to try to touch it—almost, but no, no, I just can’t do it.  

The introduction of carp launched a complex relationship that will never feel comfortable or easy. One mistake generates an endless cycle of mistakes. Like the settlers who brought them, the carp are permanent residents of Utah Valley. It’s impossible to completely remove these fish—the lake is too big and their will to live too strong. However, it’s also impossible to maintain healthy water quality, which all forms of life depend on, without managing carp biomass.

As the current human stewards of Utah Lake—many of us of settler descent, me included—we are bound to these invasive golden fish forever. We are conjugates and companions, “relentlessly becoming-with,” as Donna Haraway writes. And so, as restoration efforts continue struggling to balance carp harm, human harm, and the health of Utah Lake, my hope is to reframe the story. Instead of villainizing the carp, may we recognize and take responsibility for our transformative role in the ongoing relationship, and find ways to honor the carp’s sacrifice.

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Featured image: Carp thrash around the muddied waters of Utah Lake. Photo by author, 2024.

Teri Harman is a graduate student in the Environmental Humanities program at the University of Utah. Her research and writing explore the interwoven threads of culture, history, and ecology that create environmental narratives in the American West. Currently, she works to share a more holistic story of Utah Lake and Utah Valley, her home. She also serves as a content specialist for the UVU Museum of Art and volunteers with Conserve Utah Valley. Contact.