Sheltering fish from hydropeaking events
© 2009 doevos (flickr.com)
The rapid release of water from hydropower dams during peak production hours causes hydropeaking in the river down stream, threatening fish habitats.
The goal of the research project is to design optimum fish shelters in riverbanks. In order to assess their attractiveness, systematic experiments were carried out in a flume with juvenile brown trout by producing hydropeaking conditions using natural water from a dam reservoir. The flume is equipped with a geometrically variable fish shelter. The best refuge configurations attracted more than 80% of the fish.The traveling trajectories of the fish were registered and correlated with flow velocity measurements in order to understand fish behavior in detail.
J.-M. Ribi, K. Steffen, J.-L. Boillat, A. Peter, A. J. Schleiss (2009). “Influence of geometry of fish shelters in river banks on their attractiveness for fishes during hydropeaking” Proceedings of the 33rd congress of IAHR, ISBN: 978-94-90365-01-1 Vancouver, Canada, 9.-14. August 2009, CD-Rom, pp. 6074-6081