An empirical methodology for estimating entrainment losses at power plants sited on estuaries

A model based on empirically derived age‐, time‐, and space‐variant entrainment susceptibility data may be used for estimating conditional entrainment mortality of aquatic organisms, particularly fish and shellfish, caused by operation of one or more power plants on an estuary. Model application requires knowledge of the morphometry of the water body, the power‐plant flow rates, the probability of entrainment survival, and the duration, distribution, and abundance of entrainable age‐groups. A novel feature of the model is that organism distribution and movement within the model are defined by information derived from field samples rather than by hydrodynamic principles and equations.