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Walking Catfish Storm Into Parking Lot

YES, THEY CAN ‘WALK’

Kathy Waters/Highlands Today

Diane Foster of Sebring tries to move walking catfish into a storm drain while her grandchildren Kim Bell, 11, and Kayne Bell, 9, watch Sunday in the parking lot behind the Shoppes at Shelby Crossing. Foster brought her grandkids to see the catfish, which were scattered in the parking lot after her daughter noticed them during a smoke break.

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By MARC VALERO | Highlands Today

Published: July 7, 2008

SEBRING – Rebecka Bell thought something was fishy as she sat in her boyfriend's car at the Shoppes at Shelby Crossing parking lot.

Looking out the car window Sunday, she spotted a fish, then another and then another.

"It was the weirdest thing because neither one of us have seen anything like that before," Bell said of about 30 catfish scattered about the parking lot and on the pavement behind the shopping center.

Most of them were moving, she said. A man was scooping them up with a piece of cardboard to return them to the storm drain.

They are walking catfish, a non-native fish, according to Paul Shafland, a senior scientist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission at the non-native fish research lab in Boca Raton.

"It's not uncommon when the rains come and drainage systems overflow, for the fish to pop up on the surface of parking lots," he said.

The walking catfish's ability to breathe out of water is unique.

They can also move short distances on land much better than any other native fish can, Shafland said. They basically shuffle along through the use of their pectoral fin.

Colin Calway, of the Happy Trails Aquatics fish farm, said the walking catfish is easy to identify because of its dorsal (back) fin, which extends from behind the gills, the whole length of the body, back to the tail. Most of the native catfish have one short dorsal fin.

They will eat all the small fish in a pond, and then when the rain comes, they will travel across land as long as they can stay damp, he said.

"We've got major, major problems with them at the farm," Calway said. "We are having to raise fish above ground in artificial above-ground ponds because of the walking catfish."

Shortly after the 2004 hurricane season, Calway noticed a fish pop up on the surface of a pond where he was raising 10,000 small "aquarium" fish.

"I pumped the pond down … it was a massive walking catfish on the bottom; it wiped out every single fish," he said. "They're monsters, absolute monsters."

Shafland was more measured in his comment on the fishes' impact.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, sensationalized accounts of their catastrophic effects were proven wrong, he said.

"The bottom line is the walking catfish is here; it's been here since about 1967; it doesn't climb trees or eat dogs or any of these other things originally suggested.

"None of the exotic freshwater fish have had those types of [negative] effects that we've been able to document," he said. In comparison, man's effects have been detrimental to the aquatic and terrestrial resources of the state.

The walking catfish is most commonly found in the Everglades and associated canals, but also occurs throughout central and south Florida.

It grows to a length of 12 to 20 inches and weighs up to three pounds. Possessing and transporting live walking catfish is illegal without special state and federal permits.

While not commonly eaten in western societies, they are prized in their native home of Southeast Asia, according to the commission's fact sheet on the fish.

But Shafland was not impressed at their taste.

"I only tried them once and did not find them to my taste," Shafland said.

Marc Valero can be reached at 386-5826 or mvalero@highlandstoday.com

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