Eryn Molloy with Duke Energy holds a fish

May 5. The Lake Norman Marine Commission and Duke Energy received a shipment of sterile grass carp Thursday and dumped it straight into Lake Norman.

The sterile carp can eat up to three times their body weight in hydrilla—invasive aquatic weeds—every day. The number of fish introduced each year is based on surveys of weed growth the previous year.

Morris Sample, executive director of the Marine Commission, says the fish will travel throughout Lake Norman seeking out weeds to eat, eventually covering almost all of the lake.

Sterile grass carp