Asian Carp Are Vanishing From the Illinois River — It Wasn't the Alligator Gar

You're doing thirty miles an hour on the Illinois River when a ten-pound fish launches out of the water and slams into your chest. Then another. Then dozens, flying around the boat like artillery shells. For forty years that was this river, until the carp began thinning out on their own, and America handed the credit to an armored predator from the age of the dinosaurs, just released back into these exact waters. Everyone agreed on what was happening. Everyone was looking at the wrong thing.