An invasive fish in Oregon’s Diamond Lake has agitated fish managers of the state. The discovery of a single tui chub in October last year has let the authorities take a decision to eradicate the fish by stocking tiger trout in the lake.

The invasive fish species was found about a decade after Oregon’s $5.6 million program to eliminate the fish. Greg Huchko of Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) said only one tui chub has been discovered in the Diamond Lake and officials hope it was the only fish of this species. It next one or two years, it will be a non-issue, he added.

As per a plan of the ODFW, Diamond Lake will have approximately 25,000 tiger trout in spring this year. The effort will be followed by the officials looking for unwanted fish species during summer.

There was a time when tui chub invaded the lake and took over it. It happened when someone used the fish as live trout bate more than six decades ago and in early 1990s. In 1991, it was noted that there were more than 30 million tui chubs in the lake. The species population soared to 90 million in next 15 years, as per the agency’s records.

The ODFW noted that the increasing population of the fish had started altering Diamond Lake’s ecosystem. The agency found that Toxic blue-green algae bloom had started to spread throughout the lake’s water.

Eventually, government officials joined hands with some private members and allowed the use of rotenone to eliminate everything from the lake. They started their efforts from scratch in 2007.

The fish discovered in October was four years old. It is too young to have survived the kill-off, as per the ODFW. “We’ve tried a lot of different options in the past and never really had great success with the rainbow varieties we’ve tried. I’m just hopeful this time that we can keep things at bay for a while”, Huchko said.