Test of Snakehead Poison Starts

The experiment began at precisely 2 p.m., when Lazur and Jacobs placed a bottle of the rotenone solutions before each tank.

Eight bottles for eight tanks, each containing eight fish and a scrap of Styrofoam board, which the scientists placed there to see whether the fish would try to slither onto them to escape the water.

One by one, the scientists dumped the bottles in, then turned up the aerators in the tank to stir in the solutions.

A chemical odor wafted through the cramped quarantine lab but was quickly diluted by the smell of the dank water in the tanks.

"I can't see anything," said Jacobs, peering into the murky water.

Within minutes, though, things starting moving. "I've got darting and gulping," said Lazur, inspecting a row of four tanks opposite Jacobs. "There's three on the beach."

In the tanks with the highest concentration of poison, the three-inch baby snakeheads were darting rapidly through the water, diving and surfacing to escape the poison and gulp fresh air.

The experiment was designed to take three days but could be cut short if all the fish die before then.

An hour after the experiment began, biologists began counting the baby snakeheads that had rolled onto their sides and floated to the top. In the end, they say all of them will die, precursors to the main event in the pond.

"Someone thought they were doing those fish a favor" by releasing the fish into the pond, said Lazur, peeling off a pair of blue latex gloves. "It would've been more humane to just kill them."