My spouse had an amazing proof-of-concept for fixing invasive carp, and now they can’t find funding.
Let me back up. Invasive common carp are damaging our rivers and streams. They’ve spread to every continent but Antarctica. According to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, they’re one of the top 100 most invasive species in North America.
Carp are big, strong, and reproduce fast. They’ve spread all over the US, leaving a trail of environmental destruction in their wake. They out-compete and kill native species and are even a threat to boaters:
Tammy Newcomb, senior policy advisor for the Department of Natural Resources of Michigan, notes that a 5-year-old girl in Florida was killed by lake sturgeon, another large fish that leaps out of the water when startled, and is concerned Asian carp might do the same. […]
“So when you think about fish that are 20 pounds, 30 pounds, 50 pounds, and more flying through the air and coming in contact with young boaters, there’s a very real public health threat associated with that.”
The government has attempted to remove them for decades. They’ve tried trapping, shocking, fishing, electrocution, you name it. None of it works, because the carp reproduce too quickly. One female carp can lay hundreds of thousands to a million eggs per year. My spouse told me some models show clearing carp from just one river could take up to 50 years of nonstop killing.
The YY solution, or where we start mad science
But, over the last few years, labs in China and India have started exploring a novel solution that could actually remove invasive species. It’s called the YY Supermale.
Quick genetics refresher. A female carp has two X chromosomes. Males have one X and one Y. A baby carp gets one chromosome from each parent, chosen randomly. It’ll alwayss get an X from its mother. If it gets its father’s X, it’s be female. If it gets its father’s Y, it’s male. A baby carp has a 50% chance of getting the Y chromosome, so roughly half of all carp babies are male.
However!
What if you could change that?
What if you could guarantee that, in one lake, every single new carp was male?
You’d have one Dude Generation of carp, and then… none. A whole generation of males would be unable to reproduce and eventually die of natural causes. Forget decades - this’d clear out an entire invasive species in just a few years.
Here’s how you do it. First, you specially breed carp with two Y chromosomes - YY supermales.
Next, you target a single lake or stream and trap as many natural carp as you can. Once their population is low, you dump in your YYs. When the supermales reproduce with XX females, their offspring are guaranteed to be XY - all male.
Some natural XY males will still reproduce and create XX females, of course. But if you keep adding YY supermales over a couple generations, the male-to-female ratio will inevitably skew to male. Eventually, you get the Dude Generation, and none at all.
And here’s the thing - this works. They’ve used it to wipe out mosquito populations. It can work on carp.
This is what my spouse has been working on for the last year and a half. A consortium of western states has funded their work to create YY supermales. The project has been phenomenally successful. They’ve figured out how to make the YY supermales with hormones and careful breeding. They’ve come up with a simple, reproducible formula for wiping an invasive species off the map. This project could prevent untold environmental damage!
And now there’s no more funding.
The money is gone
When my spouse signed onto this project in spring 2024, it was funded by that consortium of states, with the promise of more later from the federal government. Unfortunately, things changed. Federal funding is difficult to find in 2025.
This is tremendously frustrating. The project is not done. Even though they’ve figured out how to make YY supermales, there are a dozen more things to do. Somebody’s got to raise large numbers of supermales and distribute them to rivers and lakes around the country. One of the drugs involved requires FDA approval. Hell, the supermales are actually just the start. The real trick, apparently, is YY superfemales. Make those, and an invasive species is as good as gone.
Please reach out
If you are a science-minded institution with funding, or you know someone with a little leftover grant money, please reach out. Heck, if you’re a private company interested in being able to raise guaranteed male fish populations, reach out. This project is working. It just needs funding.