(Photo: courtesy of John Goobie)

If you have spent any time at Jones Lake, you may have noticed goldfish living there.

A photo on social media began circulating on social media last week.

Fish Ecologist and UNB Professor Tommi Linnansaari says this could be a threat to other fish or species in the Lake, “It is the type of a fish that mostly eats invertebrates,  plant material, more crustaceans and things like that, but also includes fish eggs.  If there are any native fishes that people think that may be more desirable, goldfish could be eating the eggs of those fish and therefore affecting their populations.”

Linnansaari adds goldfish will survive in our climate in the wild, and they are quite stubborn to survive, “They can survive on very low oxygen conditions.  In fact, it can cause what we call eutrophication so lakes and ponds get more algae ridden. They do eat crustaceans from the bottom and that’s where all the nutrients, for example, phosphorus would settle.  By them disturbing the bottom,  that kind of reactivates that phosphorus and promotes algae growth, promotes phytoplankton growth and it could turn out to be not such a pleasant looking place because of the algae and green growth.”

There’s no word on where these goldfish came from or how long they have been living there. We reached out to the City of Moncton, but Spokesperson Isabelle Leblanc says they have never done any fish studies to verify the presence of goldfish and any possible impacts on the ecosystem.

Linnansaari says, “A lot of people have goldfish at home, in aquariums, or in backyard ponds, but they should keep them there.  People try to stick fish in places where they don’t belong, but generally speaking, that is almost never a good idea, and I wouldn’t recommend releasing any fish in the waterways that connect to other places.”

(Photo: courtesy of John Goobie )