| "Salmon cannon" successor automatically shoots fish up over dams | |
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Back in 2014, we heard about a so-called "fish gun" or "salmon cannon" that safely shot spawning fish up over river-blocking obstacles such as dams. Its successor is now in use, offering a couple of key advantages over the original system.
Manufactured by Seattle-based Whooshh Innovations, the salmon cannon's actual name was the Whooshh Transport System. To recap our previous coverage, it was basically a flexible plastic tube hooked up to a motorized air pump. One end of that tube was located in the river at the bottom of the dam, while the other was located up at the top. |
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The original “salmon cannon,” as it was dubbed on social media, was first used to get fish into a truck or when handling/transferring them into a hatchery or aquaculture operation. The fish were manually loaded into the bottom end of the system, where the lower air pressure inside sucked them in and up the tube. A pressure difference of about 2 PSI shot the fish along at 5 to 10 m/sec (16 to 32 ft/sec). |
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