Carp (Cyprinus carpio) are one of the worst environmental pests introduced into Australia. Carp have spread throughout the south-east of the continent and to small parts of Tasmania and Western Australia where they strongly dominate fish communities. The most serious impacts have been on aquatic plants, invertebrates, water quality and native fish but there have also been serious social amenity and economic impacts. At a landscape scale, carp cannot be controlled with any current combination of conventional control techniques (eg commercial fishing) and carp remain an intractable problem throughout their range. Recently cyprinid herpesvirus, commonly known as carp herpesvirus (CyHV-3), has been proposed as a potential biological control agent for carp.

This project will develop an international best-practice methodology to determine how many carp reside in Australia. If virus release proceeds, understanding how many carp are in our country, and their distribution in the environment, will be vital to developing virus release strategies, predicting locations in which high carp mortalities are likely and evaluating potential impacts from dead carp on water quality.