Salmons travel hundreds of miles when they are migrating. They have been doing so for thousands of years. But during his relentless pursuit of industrializing the world, mankind has built multiple roadblocks and hurdles in the path of this species.
Now environment agency workers in the United States have come up with an ingenious way to help migrating salmon overcome man-made obstacles on their journey upriver to spawn. The aptly- titled Whooshh system is currently in its pre-production testing phase, reported Sky News . The salmon migratory assistance system is being tested in Washington State’s Columbia River.
Why do salmon need a migratory assistance system? To ensure regular delivery of water, towns and cities have huge water reservoirs that trap the water and release it as needed. To generate power from the kinetic force of flowing water, the Columbia River has huge hydroelectric dams. Needless to say, these man-made architectural marvels have proven to be insurmountable for the humble salmon, which offers health benefits too.
Though schools of these fishes can easily jump a few feet in the river, they certainly can’t scale walls that are hundreds of feet tall to continue on their path. Interestingly, migration assistance has been provided by farmers for quite some time now. Thus far, these notoriously slippery fish have proven very hard to catch in large numbers to help them spawn.
Farmers have been forced to use the extremely labor intensive “carry, run, toss” technique, in which these fishes were painstakingly caught while ensuring not to hurt them. Thereafter, this “fish out of the water” had to be speedily transported before they suffocated and released at the other end. Such technique of moving the fish between storage pools resulted in a huge loss of time.
Thankfully, the Whooshh System may be able to greatly alleviate the troubles, reported Cnet . Using a high-powered vacuum system, the fish are whisked through flexible pipes at up to 22 MPH (35 Km/hr.), emerging moments later at their destination. The vacuum tube was first used in food packaging and is also being used to manage fish farms. The new system can move up to 40 fish every minute over distances of up to 200 feet (60 meters).
This is also a much more humane way of transporting the fish since now they are out of the water only for a few seconds. Experts believe the salmon will now travel in a much less stressful manner and claim the fish are happy to swim into the tube themselves.
[Image Credit | Whooshh Systems]
