Fish passage and fish protection strategies often involve use of behavioral technologies, physical barriers or operational changes to guide fish fish away from harmful passage routes and towards more fish-friendly routes. Sometimes solutions to fish passage problems require harnessing fish behavior by repelling them with a stimulus or attracting them with preferential water temperatures or flow.
We have considerable experience evaluating the performance of fish guidance measures at hydroelectric projects and navigation structures including a multi-year study funded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Seattle District to evaluate the use of strobe lights for minimizing entrainment of juvenile salmonids into filling culverts at the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks in Seattle, WA.
Johnson, P.N., K. Bouchard, and F.A. Goetz. 2005. Effectiveness of strobe lights for reducing juvenile salmonid entrainment into a navigation lock. North American Journal of Fisheries Management 25(2):491-501.
Ploskey, G.R. and P.N. Johnson. 2001. Effectiveness of strobe lights and two sound devices for eliciting avoidance by juvenile salmon. Pages 37-56 in: C. Coutant (ed) Behavioral Technologies for Fish Guidance. American Fisheries Society, Symposium 26, Bethesda, Md.
Our fish guidance experience also includes a two-year project funded by the Douglas County Public Utility District No. 1 in which we used DIDSON to test the effects of variable head differential and flow velocity on Pacific lamprey entrance behavior at Wells Dam on the Columbia River.
Adult Pacific lamprey entering the Wells Dam fishway:
In addition we tested the efficacy of a low-frequency sound array for guiding juvenile salmonids away from turbine units at Bonneville Dam’s Powerhouse 1.
Ploskey, G.R., P.N. Johnson, and T.J. Carlson. 2000. Evaluation of an array of low-frequency, sound-pressure transducers for guiding salmon smolts away from turbines at Bonneville Dam, Columbia River. North American Journal of Fisheries Management 20:951-967.
Let us know if you are interested in developing study designs for evaluating fish guidance systems.