There are more than 92,000 dams in the United States, of which at least 3% of these produce hydropower. Hydropower projects create renewable energy but also can alter habitats, restrict upstream and downstream movements of fishes and other aquatic organisms, and may stress, injure or kill migrant fishes and other aquatic organisms. In addition, there are more than 5 million culverts and other road crossing structures in the US that may fragment riverine and stream habitats, which may impact and limit the persistence of fish populations and can lead to local extinctions.
Although some dams or culverts can be removed, some serve significant socioeconomic functions and require mitigative technologies to reduce their impacts. However, many existing technologies (e.g., fishways, turbine intake exclusion screens) are ineffective, outdated, or under-developed. Advancement and application of effective fish passage technologies is therefore an essential component to the successful protection and restoration of migratory fish populations and their ecosystems.
Our Research
The Fish Passage Design and Analysis Team at the Eastern Ecological Science Center (EESC) focuses on development of new or refined fish passage and hydroelectric structures, including design, engineering, hydraulics, and evaluation. The unique, world–class facilities at EESC’s S.O. Conte Research Laboratory in Massachusetts allow controlled experimentation at full scale, ensuring that new technologies will be effective in real-world applications. We provide expertise, knowledge, products, and engineered structure designs to government agencies, non-government organizations, and private organizations to solve connectivity problems relevant to fish passage and hydropower development and mitigation.
Development and evaluation of new fish passage technologies
Advances in technologies and new or low-cost materials provide opportunities to explore and evaluate experimental structures or technologies that have application in both improving existing structures and developing new structures with increased performance at reduced capital or operational cost. Also, new knowledge in fish behavior and response to water flow, velocity, turbulence, and other environmental conditions permits predictive development of passage structures or operation conditions that capitalize on fish behavior and performance.
Recent fish passage innovations developed at EESC include: use of compressed air and electricity to guide fish to safe routes of passage and prevent entrainment or impingement in turbines; optimization of accelerating flow fields to attract and retain fish in downstream bypass entrances; and characterization of elements of attraction (flow, velocity) at fishway entrances, and upstream and downstream passage technologies for nontraditional species, such as sturgeon and eel.
Biological and engineering expertise
EESC staff include Ph.D.-level biologists and hydraulic engineers who conduct state-of-the-art research, with extensive experience with fish passage structure design and operation. EESC is also staffed with design/civil engineers, electronics specialists, and technicians to support research, and graduate students and postdoctoral associates to conduct specialized research.
Importance
Improvement of current passage and protection technologies can be accomplished via systematic and integrative research, development, and evaluation; this is EESC’s research approach. EESC provides high quality science products and technical innovations to partner agencies to support critical hydroelectric relicensing, endangered species protection, habitat restoration, and turbine research.
Fish passage and Ecohydraulics CapabilitiesHydraulics and engineering 
Sources/Usage: Public Domain.
Fish passage evaluation
Sources/Usage: Public Domain.
Fish collection, handling, and holding
Fish swimming and energetics
|
Fish Passage Hydraulic Flume
- Overview
There are more than 92,000 dams in the United States, of which at least 3% of these produce hydropower. Hydropower projects create renewable energy but also can alter habitats, restrict upstream and downstream movements of fishes and other aquatic organisms, and may stress, injure or kill migrant fishes and other aquatic organisms. In addition, there are more than 5 million culverts and other road crossing structures in the US that may fragment riverine and stream habitats, which may impact and limit the persistence of fish populations and can lead to local extinctions.
Although some dams or culverts can be removed, some serve significant socioeconomic functions and require mitigative technologies to reduce their impacts. However, many existing technologies (e.g., fishways, turbine intake exclusion screens) are ineffective, outdated, or under-developed. Advancement and application of effective fish passage technologies is therefore an essential component to the successful protection and restoration of migratory fish populations and their ecosystems.
Sources/Usage: Public Domain.EESC’s S.O. Conte Research Laboratory is uniquely situated along a power canal on the Connecticut River, allowing for direction of high volumes of flow through the flume facility, hydraulic lab, and other hydraulic structures. Our Research
The Fish Passage Design and Analysis Team at the Eastern Ecological Science Center (EESC) focuses on development of new or refined fish passage and hydroelectric structures, including design, engineering, hydraulics, and evaluation. The unique, world–class facilities at EESC’s S.O. Conte Research Laboratory in Massachusetts allow controlled experimentation at full scale, ensuring that new technologies will be effective in real-world applications. We provide expertise, knowledge, products, and engineered structure designs to government agencies, non-government organizations, and private organizations to solve connectivity problems relevant to fish passage and hydropower development and mitigation.
Sources/Usage: Public Domain.Novel D-cylinder fish ladder (left) alongside the conventional Denil fish ladder (right) during an experiment with adult American Shad in May of 2023. Development and evaluation of new fish passage technologies
Advances in technologies and new or low-cost materials provide opportunities to explore and evaluate experimental structures or technologies that have application in both improving existing structures and developing new structures with increased performance at reduced capital or operational cost. Also, new knowledge in fish behavior and response to water flow, velocity, turbulence, and other environmental conditions permits predictive development of passage structures or operation conditions that capitalize on fish behavior and performance.Recent fish passage innovations developed at EESC include: use of compressed air and electricity to guide fish to safe routes of passage and prevent entrainment or impingement in turbines; optimization of accelerating flow fields to attract and retain fish in downstream bypass entrances; and characterization of elements of attraction (flow, velocity) at fishway entrances, and upstream and downstream passage technologies for nontraditional species, such as sturgeon and eel.
Biological and engineering expertise
EESC staff include Ph.D.-level biologists and hydraulic engineers who conduct state-of-the-art research, with extensive experience with fish passage structure design and operation. EESC is also staffed with design/civil engineers, electronics specialists, and technicians to support research, and graduate students and postdoctoral associates to conduct specialized research.Importance
Improvement of current passage and protection technologies can be accomplished via systematic and integrative research, development, and evaluation; this is EESC’s research approach. EESC provides high quality science products and technical innovations to partner agencies to support critical hydroelectric relicensing, endangered species protection, habitat restoration, and turbine research.Fish passage and Ecohydraulics Capabilities
Hydraulics and engineering
Sources/Usage: Public Domain.Scale diagram of EESC’s fish passage complex at the S.O. Conte Research Laboratory in Turners Falls, MA. - Open channel flume facility with three 38 m (125 ft) long flumes and 5 m (16 ft) working depth; two 3 m (10 ft) width, one 6 m (20 ft) width; maximum 10 m3/sec (350 cfs) flow
- Hydraulic laboratory with working space of 120 m2 (1300 ft2) with 0.3 m3/sec (10 cfs) maximum gravity and pumped flow
- Tilting hydraulic flume with plexiglass walls; 3D physical modeling capability
- 1-, 2-, and 3-D water velocity measurement instrumentation, including acoustic Doppler and laser particle image velocimetry
- Flow, pressure and level instrumentation
- Digital real-time computer data acquisition
- Automated probe traverse system
- 2- and 3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling
- Complete shop; fabrication in wood, metal, plastic, TIG and arc welding, 3D printing
Fish passage evaluation
- Advanced telemetry instrumentation (radio, acoustic, PIT; 3-D acoustic telemetry) with stationary datalogging and mobile tracking capability
- High speed (1000 frames/sec), low-light, infrared, and underwater video
- Controlled laboratory tanks for behavioral studies
- Advanced statistical, numeric modeling, and visualization tools for analysis of fish behavior, movement, and passage data
Sources/Usage: Public Domain.EESC’s Aquatic Biomechanics and Kinematics Station (ABiKiS) is a tiltable flume that allows for the study of the swimming ability, biomechanics, and ecohydraulic phenomena. Fish collection, handling, and holding
- Traditional fish collection equipment (seines, nets, traps)
- Backpack and boat electrofishers
- Fish transport trucks with large (3.8 m3/1000 gal) and small (0.8 m3 /200 gal) transport tanks
- 12 ft (3.7 m) to 23 ft (7 m) power boats for fish tracking, netting, trawling, and surveying
- Indoor and outdoor fish holding tanks from 0.4 m3 (10 gal) to 23 m3 (6000 gal) with flow-through river water or recirculating, temperature-controlled flow
Fish swimming and energetics
- Several large-volume and high-speed swimming respirometers
- Aquatic Biomechanics and Kinematics Station (ABiKiS), a large (35 m/115 ft long) open/closed-channel linear sprint-swimming flume with 0.5 m x 0.5 m (1.6 ft x 1.6 ft) cross-sectional area capable of test water velocities up to 5 m/sec (16.4 ft/sec)
- Science
Fish Passage Hydraulic Flume
Many existing upstream and downstream fish passage structure designs (fishways, culverts, screens, downstream bypasses, etc.) function poorly or only for a narrow range of species or environmental conditions. Resource agencies consistently seek new or improved designs that pass a broader range of species with high efficiency and reliability, under a wider range of hydraulic operating conditions...