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Technical fishway passage structures provide high passage efficiency and effective passage for adult Pacific salmonids at eight large dams
- Source :
- PLoS ONE, PLoS ONE, Vol 16, Iss 9, p e0256805 (2021)
- Publication Year :
- 2021
- Publisher :
- Public Library of Science, 2021.
-
Abstract
- Fishways have been widely used for upstream passage around human-built structures, but ‘success’ has varied dramatically. Evaluation of fishway success has typically been conducted at local scales using metrics such as fish passage efficiency and passage time, but evaluations are increasingly used in broader assessments of whether passage facilities meet population-specific conservation and management objectives. Over 15 years, we monitored passage effectiveness at eight dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers for 26,886 radio-tagged spring-summer and fall Chinook Salmon O. tshwaytscha, Sockeye Salmon O. nerka, and summer steelhead O. mykiss during their migrations to spawning sites. Almost all fish that entered dam tailraces eventually approached and entered fishways. Tailrace-to-forebay passage efficiency estimates at individual dams were consistently high, averaging 0.966 (SD = 0.035) across 245 run×year×dam combinations. These estimates are among the highest recorded for any migratory species, which we attribute to the scale of evaluation, salmonid life history traits (e.g., philopatry), and a sustained adaptive management approach to fishway design, maintenance, and improvement. Full-dam fish passage times were considerably more variable, with run×year×dam medians ranging from 5–65 h. Evaluation at larger scales provided evidence that fishways were biologically effective, e.g., we observed rapid migration rates (medians = 28–40 km/d) through river reaches with multiple dams and estimated fisheries-adjusted upstream migration survival of 67–69%. However, there were substantive uncertainties regarding effectiveness. Uncertainty about natal origins confounded estimation of population-specific survival and interpretation of apparent dam passage ‘failure’, while lack of post-migration reproductive data precluded analyses of delayed or cumulative effects of passing the impounded system on fish fitness. Although the technical fishways are effective for salmonids in the Columbia-Snake River system, other co-migrating species have lower passage rates, highlighting the need for species-specific design and evaluation wherever passage facilities impact fish management and conservation goals.
- Subjects :
- Male
Chinook wind
Marine and Aquatic Sciences
Social Sciences
Salmon
Psychology
Telemetry
Marine Fish
Multidisciplinary
biology
Animal Behavior
Cumulative effects
Eukaryota
Freshwater Fish
Osteichthyes
Oncorhynchus mykiss
Vertebrates
Freshwater fish
Fish
Medicine
Engineering and Technology
Female
Seasons
Research Article
Conservation of Natural Resources
Fish Biology
Science
Fisheries
Equipment
Marine Biology
Bioengineering
Life history theory
Fish physiology
Rivers
Species Specificity
Fish Physiology
Animals
Animal Physiology
Humans
Communication Equipment
Behavior
Endangered Species
Organisms
Biology and Life Sciences
biology.organism_classification
Vertebrate Physiology
Fishery
Adaptive management
Fish
Earth Sciences
Environmental science
Philopatry
Animal Migration
Antennas
Zoology
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 19326203
- Volume :
- 16
- Issue :
- 9
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- PLoS ONE
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....ac9ec6247bc877ce09810cfca51e70d1