Parts of a pneumatic fish pump, dubbed the salmon cannon, have arrived at the site of a massive landslide along B.C.’s Fraser River, where Fisheries and Oceans Canada expects some salmon to begin arriving soon.
Gwil Roberts, director of the department’s landslide response team, said six 160-metre tubes of different sizes are being suspended along the canyon wall above the river.
A fish ladder that Roberts said is nearly complete would attract salmon and guid them into a holding pond before they enter the fish pump and tube system that will take them up river to their spawning grounds.
The system is leased from a Seattle-based company and includes a scanner that measures the size of the fish to send them into the appropriate tube.
The largest tube is about 25 centimetres in diameter, Roberts said, and the system is more gentle than the “salmon cannon” label suggests.
He said a deceleration mechanism would slow the salmon down and deposit them gently upstream after the fish have travelled about 20 metres per second for 20 seconds.