Crofton, Md.
The ravenous Chinese fish threatening Maryland’s marine life are refugees from a soup pot, investigators said this week. Biologists tracked down a man who admitted dumping two Chinese Northern Snakeheads into a Crofton pond. Snakeheads are prized in China for their flavor and healing properties, so the man ordered the pair two years ago from a New York fish market to make soup for his ailing sister; she was better by the time they arrived. The toothy fish eat a wide variety of marine life, and can breathe air and crawl over land on their fins to search out new prey. State officials fear the fish and their progeny could escape the pond, and wipe out native fish and frogs in nearby rivers.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Book reviews: ‘Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America’ and ‘How to End a Story: Collected Diaries, 1978–1998’Feature A political ‘witch hunt’ and Helen Garner’s journal entries
-
The backlash against ChatGPT's Studio Ghibli filterThe Explainer The studio's charming style has become part of a nebulous social media trend
-
Why are student loan borrowers falling behind on payments?Today's Big Question Delinquencies surge as the Trump administration upends the program
