A3
THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2019
Migrating salmon get a boost past dams
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
SEATTLE — Eight years ago, Vincent
Bryan III was fi eld testing his prototype of an
apple harvest-assist machine in his family’s
orchard near the Columbia River southwest of
Quincy, Washington.
Helicopters passed overhead with large
buckets of water dangling from them. He was
curious about their mission and later found out
they were moving salmon over a nearby dam.
It seemed to him like an expensive way to
move fi sh.
His apple harvest machine used vacuum
tubes to move apples from pickers’ hands to
a bin. He wondered: What if you could move
salmon over dams in tubes instead of using
helicopters, fi sh ladders or trucks?
About a year later, he was testing his har-
vest-assist machine in a citrus orchard near
Fresno, California, and noticed a neighboring
orchard, which had been alive the year before,
was now dead. Its irrigation water had been
reallocated for fi sh.
Believing there had to be better solutions,
Bryan turned from his fruit harvest-assist
machine to experimenting with moving fi sh
in tubes.
He assembled a meeting of fi sh experts
from the National Marine Fisheries Service,
also known as NOAA Fisheries, the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers, the Washington
Department of Fish and Wildlife and univer-
sities to discuss his idea.
They met at his family’s Cave B Inn & Spa
Resort near their Cave B Estate Winery and
orchard, southwest of Quincy, where he fi rst
observed the helicopters carrying fi sh.
In an effort to help 12 salmon and steel-
head populations that are protected under the
Endangered Species Act, the federal govern-
ment has spent more than $1 billion to help
the fi sh get past the dams and to improve their
habitat, according to the Northwest Power and
Conservation Council.
While much focus had been on help-
ing juvenile salmon headed downriver to the
ocean, the consensus in the group was to help
salmon returning upriver to spawn.
“Fish ladders had not entirely solved the
problem as evidenced by declining returns, so
mathematically you could have a much greater
impact on returning one adult pair upstream
than aiding two juvenile downstream,” Bryan
said.
For a variety of reasons, a huge percentage
of adult salmon die before reaching spawning
beds in the far reaches of tributaries. And juve-
nile salmon that do hatch from their eggs are
often food for invasive fi sh species.
On top of that, sea lions consume large
numbers of salmon heading from the ocean up
Whooshh Innovations
A tube carries fi sh over the Cle Elum Dam in July 2017. The 1,700-foot-long tube is the longest
Whooshh Innovations has used to transport salmon. Fish travel at 32 feet per second.
the Columbia River at Bonneville Dam. Also,
on hot summer and early fall days, fi sh ladder
water gets too warm, causing salmon to turn
away, seeking cooler water.
By using his system to divert invasive
fi sh and getting more salmon to spawning
grounds, their numbers will increase, Bryan
said. It can be done more effi ciently and at a
lower cost than fi sh ladders and saves the 5%
to 10% of the riverfl ow from going down fi sh
ladders. That water can instead be used for
more power generation.
Developing Whooshh
In 2013, Bryan changed the name of his
Seattle company from Picker Technologies
to Whooshh Innovations Inc. and for the next
two years worked on developing fi sh-friendly
transport tubes and the accompanying sys-
tems that move fi sh over dams quickly and
effi ciently. The system could also be used to
move fi sh in commercial aquaculture and in
processing plants.
The name, Whooshh, was chosen to rep-
licate the sound of fi sh going through tubes
and, eying international sales, everyone could
relate to it. The company also trademarked the
name “salmon cannon.”
There were design, engineering, proto-
types, testing and regulations. There were new
studies every time a component was added or
changed. Some 20 studies were done by inde-
pendent laboratories.
“It’s not an approval process but more akin
to ‘we won’t object,’” Bryan said of working
with governmental agencies.
“We proved it’s as good or better than alter-
natives. We asked skeptics to step back from
the river through their backyard and look at
the bigger picture,” he said.
Part of his pitch was that wind and solar
generation won’t be able to meet the demand if
the public wants a non-carbon-powered elec-
trical grid. That means hydropower — dams
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— must remain part of the picture, and for that
to happen fi sh passage must be improved.
Bureaucracy is slow to recognize and
adapt to better ways of doing things and won’t
until people demand that politicians push for
change, Bryan said.
While the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
was helpful last summer with a demonstra-
tion of the system at Chief Joseph Dam on the
Columbia River, it is spending $200 million
to update a trap-and-haul fi sh passage systems
at the Buckley Diversion and Mud Mountain
dams in King County. Whooshh could provide
better passage for $20 million, Bryan said.
“From our perspective this is a question of
bureaucracy and a lack of impetus for people
to do things differently even though there is
overwhelming evidence what they have been
doing is not good enough,” Bryan said. “If sci-
entists and agencies paid attention to the sci-
ence they would not be hesitating. They can
look at the data on our website. We can talk
about this stuff forever, or actually do it.”
Whooshh sales
Whooshh sold its fi rst system at the end of
2014 to the Washington Department of Fish
and Wildlife to separate wild and hatchery fi sh
on the Washougal River near Vancouver.
Whooshh has now deployed 20 systems,
not all dam fi sh passage systems, to sites in the
Northwest, Sweden and Norway. It has signed
an agreement in Argentina and on Oct. 21 met
with representatives of China.
A scanning system Whooshh installed this
spring at Bonneville Dam showed 14% of
salmon with major injury, mostly from sea
lions, that will prevent them from spawning,
Bryan said.
Of the 20 systems, fi ve provide seasonal
fi sh passage at dams. The longest is 1,700 feet
and 180 feet high at the Cle Elum Dam in the
Washington Cascades.
On Aug. 22, about 200 people attended a
demonstration at Chief Joseph Dam, the sec-
ond-largest dam on the Columbia after the
Grand Coulee Dam.
A limited number of salmon went into a
tube during the demonstration, traveling 500
feet to the top of the dam, making a U turn and
traveling 500 feet back down.
Salmon migration ends at the Chief Joseph
and Grand Coulee dams because Grand Cou-
lee, about 350 feet tall from the downriver to
upriver side, is too tall for a fi sh ladder.
For years, the Colville Confederated Tribes
and others who support native fi sh runs in the
Columbia have desired some means of help-
ing salmon past those dams. Bryan believes
his system is the answer and foresees it being
used on other dams on the Columbia and other
rivers in Washington and British Columbia.
Fish ladders can be long and exhausting for
fi sh. Whooshh tubes can move salmon over
dams much faster and with less stress and
mortality to fi sh. The tubes are modular and
portable and typically cost 60% to 80% less
than a fi sh ladder or truck operation, Bryan
said. Over time, ladders also fi ll with sedi-
ment, which has to be removed.
Dam operators can pay for the system in
extra power generated from water no longer
diverted into fi sh ladders, he said.
How it works
Whooshh Innovation’s fi sh tubes are made
with a fl exible, soft, translucent material.
Water mist is injected into the tube to make it
nearly frictionless for the salmon.
Salmon are attracted by a fl ow of water to
an 18-inch-wide entry point, narrow enough
that fi sh enter one at a time swimming slightly
uphill. Then they slide downhill into a dewa-
tered trough where a computerized, optical
system sorts hatchery salmon, identifi ed by
tags or clipped adipose fi ns, from wild salmon
and from invasive species.
Hatchery salmon are diverted to a hatchery,
invasive fi sh can rerouted for several uses and
wild salmon continue into the tube and over
the dam.
The system can handle up to 40 fi sh per
minute, which is more than 57,000 fi sh in 24
hours. If the need is greater, a second system
can be added, Bryan said.
A goal is to limit a fi sh’s tube travel time
to less than 1 minute. The top speed for the
1,700 feet at Cle Elum Dam is 32 feet per sec-
ond, or 22 mph, decelerating in the last 300
feet. The National Marine Fisheries Service
requires they exit the tube at no more than 25
feet per second.
“We’ve done our work on the technical
side, now we’re trying to help operators with
the fi nancing side and then it’s just scaling up
the number of systems we can produce in a
year,” Bryan said.
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