Researchers continue to work to make the environment a little safer for Salmon in Washington and their new design Sensor Fish will reduce harm fish face when traveling around dams.
The small sensors have a huge impact, not only here in Washington, but they are being used across the world.
Fish swimming near dams can be harmful for them, but over the years scientists have researched ways to reduce that harm. They created synthetic fish to do that, but now they have one that is even better.
The Sensor Fish acts just like a fish but can test for pressure injuries, strikes by rotating blades, and turbines and the water flowing around it.
This can tell us the physical conditions that caused the injuries, said Daniel Deng, lead Senor Fish developer.
Right now, the U.S. survival rate for fish passing through dams is nearly 90%, but the Department of Energy wants more improvement.
Despite such high survival rates, we’re still required to make the dams more fish friendly, said Deng.
This nearly 4-inch device has 11 sensors in it and it collects 2,000 samples per second for each sensor.
This high sampling rate is required to understand the sudden impact fish experience when they pass through the turbines, said Deng.
Once a fish passes through the dam, they send out a Sensor Fish right behind it to take the same path to measure what forces and obstacles that fish faced. Once data is collected from the Sensor Fish, it is sent over to turbine designers and dam operators so they can know what needs to be adjusted to make the environment safer for the fish.
The sensor fish has a device that allows it to float below the surface like a real fish, floats to the top when it’s done testing, and uses a rechargeable battery.
The cost of the new model has dropped from $5,000 to $1,2000.
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