Much effort has been devoted to developing, constructing and refining fish passage facilities to enable target species to pass barriers on fluvial systems, and yet, fishway science, engineering and practice remain imperfect. In this review, 17 experts from different fish passage research fields (i.e., biology, ecology, physiology, ecohydraulics, engineering) and from different continents (i.e., North and South America, Europe, Africa, Australia) identified knowledge gaps and provided a roadmap for research priorities and technical developments. Once dominated by an engineering-focused approach, fishway science today involves a wide range of disciplines from fish behaviour to socioeconomics to complex modelling of passage prioritization options in river networks. River barrier impacts on fish migration and dispersal are currently better understood than historically, but basic ecological knowledge underpinning the need for effective fish passage in many regions of the world, including in biodiversity hotspots (e.g., equatorial Africa, South-East Asia), remains largely unknown. Designing efficientThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

To provide environmental guidelines for operation of peaking hydropower plants, stranding experiments with juvenile brown trout (Salmo trutta) were conducted in a 3.8 m wide and 19.2 m long artificial stream. We found a significant decrease in stranding of trout fry by reducing the dewatering speed from >60 cm h À1 to <10 cm h À1. At water temperatures around 11 C we found that less than 8% of the trout stranded during night experiments (on average for all subsets at dewatering rate >60 cm h À1 ). However, the highest stranding rate occurred at water temperatures around 7 C during rapid dewatering at night (mean ¼ 22% stranding). Significantly more fry were stranded in the first versus the second to fifth dewatering episode (mean ¼ 22% versus 10% stranding) at rapid daytime dewatering in 11 C water. Stranding of larger fry (>0 þ ) was negligible at water temperatures around 11 C, except at rapid dewatering during daylight. Further, twice as many 0 þ trout as larger fry ( >70 mm in June, >60 mm in late summer) stranded during rapid dewatering during daytime, and almost three times as many 0 þ stranded during rapid dewatering when they were mixed with trout parr compared to homogeneous 0 þ experiments. Our study showed a tendency towards an increased stranding of fry with long habituation time (<30 hours versus >30 hours with stable flow). We recommend dewatering in darkness at all times of year to reduce stranding of salmonids, and to use slow ramping rates <10 cm h À1. After longer periods with stable flows, a gentle drop in discharge is recommended, which might also reduce stress and possible sub-lethal effects.

Extensive mortality in Atlantic salmon fry was reported in the River Åelva from 2002 to 2004. Dead fish were collected in late summer 2006, and live fish were sampled by electrofishing in September the same year. At autopsy and in histological sections, the fish kidneys were found to be pale and considerably enlarged. Proliferative lesions with characteristic PKX cells were seen in a majority of the fish. DNA from kidney samples of diseased fish was subjected to PCR and sequencing, and the amplified sequences matched those of Tetracapsuloides bryosalmonae. We concluded that this myxozoan transmitted from bryozoans was the main cause of the observed mortality in salmon fry in 2006. Results from quantitative electrofishing in 2005 and 2006, combined with the observed fry mortality from 2002 to 2004, show that the smolt production in the river is severely reduced and that T. bryosalmonae is the most likely explanation for this decline. The present study is the first to report a considerable negative population effect in wild Atlantic salmon due to proliferative kidney disease (PKD). It also represents the northernmost PKD outbreak in wild fish. The river is regulated for hydroelectric power purposes, causing reduced water flow and elevated summer temperatures, and the present PKD outbreak may serve as an example of increased disease vulnerability of northern fish populations in a warmer climate.

No abstract

In this study, cost effective (in terms of reducing loss of power production) measures for increasing bypass migration of Atlantic salmon Salmo salar were developed and tested by establishing statistical models for timing of smolt migration and favourable diversion of water to the bypass. Initial tracking of radio-tagged smolts showed very low bypass migration under normal hydropower operations. Bypass migration increased when bypass discharge was experimentally increased and a model was developed that described relationships between total river discharge, bypass diversion and smolt migration route. Further improvements were obtained by installing two strobe lights at the power-production tunnel entrance that increased bypass migration during the night, but not during daytime. According to the behaviour of radio-tagged fish, the implemented measures contributed to increasing the annual percentage of bypass migration from 11 to 64%, and according to model predictions to 60-74% when the hydropower facilities were operated according to the developed models. To ensure correct timing of discharge diversion a smolt migration model was developed based on environmental variables that could successfully predict the general pattern of migration timing. The concept presented for improving smolt migration past hydropower intakes should be applicable in many systems where migration past hydropower installations cannot easily be solved by screening systems.