(country music) - You want some chili?

- We saw them leaping out all over the place.

- Oh, it's crazy.

- Actual carp.

- I haven't ever tried any actually.

- Kind of ugly looking really.

- Yeah.

I used to say, don't wanna eat a carp 'cause it's hard to clean and it don't taste good.

- It's gonna hurt our native species is what's gonna happen if we don't get it out there.

- You eat the, do you eat the carp?

- Nah, I hope that ain't what it is.

(all laughing) - He's more of a catfish guy.

(All laughing) - [Narrator] Right now.

Our environment is facing rapid and dramatic change from global warming to rising sea levels, to new invasive species.

As a global community we know what we need to do to address these problems at their source.

But we will also have to adapt.

In fact, for millions of people around the world, adaptation is already a part of everyday life.

My name is Alizé Carrere.

I'm a scientist and National Geographic explorer living in Miami, Florida, a city where adaptation to climate change is right at our doorstep.

I study how human lives are impacted by environmental change.

And in my work I envisioned the kind of futures we want to live in.

My research has taken me around the world where I've learned from communities who have had to experiment with new ways to survive from the reefs of the South Pacific, to the rivers of the American Midwest.

In this series we'll discover some of the innovative and surprising ways people are learning to adapt.

These are their stories.

(soft piano music) Asian carp.

We brought them to America in the seventies to battle algae from catfish farms, but then they escaped into the wild.

They have since multiplied out of control using the Mississippi river as a freshwater highway to completely infest tributaries and lakes.

They're killing off native species and are a major threat to fisheries in up to 31 states.

They're dangerous for people too.

Whenever they're spooked by noises, vibrations, or even shadows, these fish will leap out of the water and can break bones, cause concussions or worse.

The Asian carp invasion, originally a man-made solution to a set of man-made problems now needs a solution of its own.

In Wickliffe, Kentucky, that all starts with a woman.

One very determined woman who saw entrepreneurial potential, where others saw a pest.

- [Woman] When I was a kid, I never thought I will set up here, especially Kentucky.

Now I'm a Kentuck.

(upbeat music) When I first came here, I liked this place because it resembles my hometown.

My hometown is located in Heilongjiang province in north seas, part of China.

We grow, you know, corns and the soybeans.

I found this place along the Mississippi river.

Immediately I fall in love with Wickliffe.

I like this little town a lot.

- How big is Wycliffe?

- Oh, we have about 700 people.

(both laughing) - Tinie.

- We even don't have a McDonald's.

- [Alizé] No?

- No, I'm the first Chinese American here.

- Wow.

Beautiful time of day to come see it.

- Yes.

You see the big building there, that's our biggest building, highest building.

Three stories.

- That's the Wickliffe skyscraper?

- [Angie] Yes.

- And here's your only stoplight.

- Yeah.

This is a full stoplight here.

- You said you have one and a half stoplights.

- Yeah, the other one is a half.

(Angie laughing) - [Alizé] We're Angie's from carp is practically a delicacy, a symbol of abundance, good luck, fertility, and most importantly, they're just plain delicious.

Angie didn't understand why Americans were sitting back and rejecting this plentiful food source that's choking our waterways.

So she came up with a local plan to change that.

She would start one of the first, large scale carp processing businesses on the Mississippi river.

- This is a confluence over the two rivers.

This part is Ohio river.

This is Mississippi river.

They join together here.

So that's why we named our company Two Rivers Fisheries.

- That's so great.

- 'Cause we have got these two big rivers here.

- And these are full of carp.

- Yeah.

Full of carp.

- [Lining] Because carp reproduce so fast and carp are so resilient, you can find carping anywhere in the world.

I mean, you could find it in Africa, you could find it in Siberia.

You could find it under the ice, you could find it in very hot, humid swamps.

They are super productive and a super resilient fish.

- [Alizé] Unfortunately resilience isn't a quality that makes fish appetizing to Americans.

- Do you eat carp?

- I don't, I have not eaten carp.

- I'm a catfish kid.

- I've always liked Catfish, tastes better.

You know, that's pretty much all I fish for too, catfish now.

- [Alizé] But there's a whole world outside of America that's already crazy about carp, especially when it's wild caught.

- We can haul 20,000 in this boat and when I first got it, there was days we couldn't haul them all.

- Wow - Now since we've been fishing for them so hard we've actually really thinned them down.

But they're still- (Wind blowing drowns out talking) - Well 'cause they reproduce so quickly, right?

- Yeah.

- Is that not the big issue?

- Yeah - [Alizé] Dennis and Dakota are two local fishermen who catch carp for Angie's business.

- [Fisherman] It's coming to you now.

- I liked that baseball pitch you just gave me.

- [Alizé] So when did you start fishing carp?

- Probably five or six years ago.

- But they were around.

You just started making them- - Oh they was here probably close to 20 years ago, but not in the numbers.

When we first started catching them, we didn't really know what they were.

I'd call Fish and Wildlife in Tennessee and I'd say, you know, I'm catching the crap out of these carp.

- What were the most common fish you were catching before the carp came in?

- Mostly was catfish in Buffalo.

That was almost all exclusively all we did.

Before Angie got Two Rivers, we didn't have a market for drum or even the common carp.

Now that we can sell them, it helps get rid of them at a lake.

It helps us.

So it helps kind of like everybody.

Okay.

You know what is even more amazing to me?

We've already got a couple of thousand pounds back there.

You think about it.

That's 4,000 people we've done have the fish to feed already today.

- [Alizé] Wow.

And then yet it's just sort of regarded as trash around here.

- [Fisherman] Around here.

It is.

- [Alizé] But why are people doing what you're doing while putting out these kind of nets to get the carp?

- Some people just don't like to change, you know.

Male or female?

- Male - You're getting better.

- [Alizé] That one's beautiful.

I just love the color of that.

- I like them too, but we're not that close.

(both laughing) (calm guitar music) - Angie opened her car processing plant in Wycliffe in 2013 and they've been working to process and sell carp both in the U.S. and abroad.

This is Jeff Smith.

- Hi Jeff, how are you?

Nice to meet you.

- [Jeff] Good to meet you.

- [Angie] He is our manager - Wonderful - [Alizé] Jeff oversees everything from the delivery of the fresh caught fish through all the processing, packaging, freezing and shipping.

- Oh we've got some more fish just coming in.

- That's good right there.

We've got you.

- [Alizé] The global demand for wild caught carp is booming and they can barely keep up.

- [Jeff] We've exported our carp literally to 11 different countries so far.

Europe, Middle East Bangladesh.

We've shipped to China before.

- Product of America.

- When we market the fish here, we name it Kentucky white fish so people not connected with the carp.

- The reason why I think the carp has a bad reputation in the United States is because we as an American society, we want something quick.

We want something fast and we wanna eat it now.

We don't want to have to pick through the bone.

- Jeff's right.

Carp are really boney.

So to adapt it to American palettes in particular, they started making value added products, including carp hotdogs, carp bratwurst, carp pot stickers and the delicious carp burgers.

- Hey, did you eat the carp burgers?

- [Alizé] Sure did.

- My husband had them both ways.

They had them the way they told me to fix them, then he had it my way.

- Did you like it?

- I've got him trained 53 years.

Got me.

He's going to love anything I cook.

He's gonna be happy if I cook.

- So you eat the carp then.

- Oh yeah.

I, I like it.

I, if it's fixed right, I like it.

We do love the catfish, and that's what I buy from them but now I buy the carp too.

- Well, and I'm glad that the community feels that way about Angie coming in- - Oh no, we love her.

Angie is just so loving.

I thank God all the time that they're added to this county.

- I strongly believe that in the future, the carp will be popular.

People will like carp here because they are wild, they are healthy, they help our local people.

We can create jobs.

We can turn this problem in to a treasure.

You know, tasting is believing.

- [Man] Anybody want the first bite?

- [Man] It's really good.

- Oh wow.

That's incredible.

Carp has such a nice, mild flavor.

It's not fishy at all.

- No - People need to be eating this fish.

It's really good.

Or at least try it.

- All parts of carp are very valuable if you know what you're doing.

We're not going to stop them.

We're not going to eradicate them no matter how hard we try.

We're going to move from a old equilibrium to a new equilibrium.

This is not a zero sum game.

You're basically adapting.

- Put them with tartar sauce on a bun.

They're really nice.

(happy guitar music) - [Alizé] I think this small story on the Mississippi river is about more than carp.

It's relevant to all of us living with change.

It's not easy to watch our familiar landscapes and traditions change right before our eyes.

It can be sad and even scary, but what if we use that change as an opportunity?

How might we deal with the problem in a way that makes things even better off than they were before?

This trip to Kentucky taught me a lot about the power of perspective and how much we can learn from other cultures and histories as we look for answers to the changes we will continue to face.

And maybe most importantly, the town of Wickliffe shows that coming together as a community is the ultimate recipe for success.

(happy guitar music) (upbeat guitar music), - [Alizé] Angie, what's your favorite food?

- Fish - Jeff, what's your favorite food.?

- Fish (both laughing)