Relating swimming performance of lake sturgeon, Acipenser fulvescens, to fishway design

Abstract

Fishways have traditionally been designed to provide safe passage for jumping fish and only recently have nonjumping species been considered. Concern over dwindling populations of lake sturgeon, Acipenser fulvescens, has focused attention on fishway designs that accommodate its swimming abilities. The objective of this study was to derive a model that relates swimming endurance of lake sturgeon to length and flow characteristics of fishways. Endurance at sustained and prolonged swimming speeds (those maintainable for more than 20 s) increased with water temperature but was independent of temperature at higher burst speeds. Endurance increased with total length at all swimming velocities. Swimming performance of lake sturgeon, relative to body length, is inferior to that of most salmonids, particularly at burst speeds. Fishway designers need to consider swimming ability, space requirements, and behavior of lake sturgeon to ensure that they can ascend potential migratory obstacles safely.

Comparative Physiology and Relative Swimming Performance of Three Redhorse (Moxostomaspp.) Species: Associations with Fishway Passage Success

“…The swimming ability of fishes is commonly measured in a laboratory setting where a fish is forced to swim against a current with a known velocity, often generating estimates of critical swimming speed or estimates of time to fatigue (e.g., Peake 2008). Knowledge of the swimming ability of different fishes has been used to identify potential velocity barriers (Peake et al 1997a(Peake et al , 1997b) and generate models for use in the evaluation of different fishway passage facilities (Haro et al 2004), thus informing biological design criteria (Rodriguez et al 2006;Katopodis and Gervais 2012). Physiological methods such as muscle and blood biochemistry and respiratory energetics (e.g., metabolic rate, aerobic capacity) have been identified as useful ways to measure the physiological consequences of fishway passage (e.g., Connor et al 1964;Dominy 1971;Cocherell et al 2011;Roscoe et al 2011;Pon et al 2012).…”

Post-tagging behaviour and habitat use in shortnose sturgeon measured with high-frequency accelerometer and PSATs

“…Shortnose sturgeon exhibited significantly lower average TBF (~1 Hz) and associated swimming speeds (<0.2 ms ) than those observed in laboratory studies [67][68][69][70]. The high pitch angles (>10°) that were observed >50 % of the time among all fish may be related to low river-flow speeds of <1 BLs −1 when the negatively buoyant fish swim at unsteady rates or to achieve a force balance when swimming in the low current [69].…”

“…Most kinematic studies are conducted in flume tanks to simulate dam passage and rarely include swimming at low speeds (e.g. [67][68][69][70]). One potential explanation is that endurance during lower swimming speeds is elevated as suggested by studies on juvenile sturgeon [56].…”

Swimming activity and energetic costs of adult lake sturgeon during fishway passage

“…As such, considerable effort has been devoted to linking species-specific swimming ability with fishway design (e.g. Peake et al, 1997). However, fishways that are uniformly successful at passing all individuals or species are rare (Bunt et al, 2012), and individuals that are successful may still exhibit delayed mortality (Roscoe et al, 2011).…”

“…Sturgeon have a relatively limited capacity for high-speed swimming, resulting from high profile drag (Webb, 1986) and poor aerobic capacity (Peake et al, 1997). Considerable attention has been devoted to facilitating upstream passage of sturgeon at fishways via laboratory-derived swimming models (Peake et al, 1997), observations of captive sturgeon ascending experimental fishways (Cheong et al, 2006;Cocherell et al, 2011;Kynard et al, 2011;Webber et al, 2007) and field observations of passage behaviour including quantification of fishway efficiency (Parsley et al, 2007;Thiem et al, 2011). Given their poor aerobic swimming ability, it is possible that fishways impose a particularly high energetic cost to migrating sturgeon, and that energetic expenditure may explain differences in passage success.…”