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.

Worldwide, obstructions on watercourses have interfered with migratory pathways of fish species, reducing life-cycle success and often eliminating diadromous fish species altogether from river basins. Over the last century, efforts to mitigate these effects were initially directed at developing fishways for upstream, high-value migrant adult salmon. In more recent years, efforts have turned to developing fishways for other species. Results of past research suggest that the development of effective fishways requires biological knowledge of fish behaviour when encountering variable flows, velocity and turbulence, combined with hydraulic and civil engineering knowledge and expertise to develop facilities that provide appropriate hydraulic conditions that fish will exploit. Further, it often requires substantial financial resources for biological and hydraulic testing as well as engineering design, particularly where prior knowledge of the behaviour of target fish species does not exist. Where biological or engineering knowledge (or both) is absent, development of effective passage facilities must take on a trial and error approach that will almost certainly require years to attain success. Evaluations of existing adult and juvenile fish passage facilities, where they have been carried out, suggest that migrant fish reject areas with hydraulic conditions they determine unsuitable. Even well designed fish ladders or nature-like bypass channels for upstream migrants, even those with good attraction flows, will fail if incorrectly sited. Although progress has been made, developing successful installations for downstream migrants remains much more difficult, probably because downstream fish move with the flow and have less time to assess cues at entrances to any bypasses that they encounter.

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.

Turbulence is a complex phenomenon which commonly occurs in river and fishway flows. It is a difficult subject to study, especially biologically, yet turbulence may affect fish movements and fish passage efficiency. Studies on quantifying fish responses to turbulence, particularly within fishways, are lacking. This study investigated the swimming behaviour of 140 adult Iberian barbel (Luciobarbus bocagei) of two size-classes (small fish: 15 ≤ TL < 25 cm, large fish: 25 < TL ≤ 35 cm) under turbulent flow conditions created by three submerged orifice arrangements in an experimental pool-type fishway: (i) offset orifices, (ii) straight orifices and (iii) straight orifices with a deflector bar of 0.5b o located at 0.2L from the inlet orifices, where b o is the width of the square orifices ranging from 0.18 to 0.23 m and L is the pool length (1.90 m). Water velocity and turbulence (turbulent kinetic energy, Reynolds shear stress, turbulence intensity and eddy size) were characterized using a 3D Acoustic Doppler Velocimeter (ADV) and were related with fish swimming behaviour. The influence of turbulent flow on the swimming behaviour of barbel was assessed through the number of successful fish passage attempts and associated passage times. The amount of time fish spent in a certain cell of the pool (transit time) was measured and related to hydraulic conditions. The highest rates of passage and the corresponding lowest times were found in experiments conducted with offset orifices. Although size-related behavioural responses to turbulence were observed, Reynolds shear stress appeared as one of the most important turbulence descriptors explaining fish transit time for both size-classes in experiments conducted with offset and straight orifices; furthermore, swimming behaviour of larger fish was found to be strongly affected by the eddies created, in particular by those of similar size to fish total length, which were mainly found in straight orifices with a deflector bar arrangement. The results provide valuable insights on barbel swimming behavioural responses to turbulence, which may help engineers and biologists to develop effective systems for the passage of this species and others with similar biomechanical capacities.

The restoration of fish passage has been focused on anadromous fish species, whilst studies accommodating passage of coarse species have often been considered incidental, yet frequently these are the predominant group of species encountered in rivers. In addition, fishway designs depend greatly on the interplay between hydraulics and biomechanics, yet very little data are available on the responses to specific hydraulic settings for these species. This study aims to explore the effects of water velocity and turbulence on the behaviour of a cyprinid species -the Iberian barbel Luciobarbus bocagei (Steindachner, 1864) -particularly their upstream movements upon different discharges (38.5 to 77.0 L Á s À1 ), through an indoor full scale pool-type fishway prototype. Larger adults had a higher passage success (mean ¼ 79%) and took less time (mean AE SD (min): 5.7 AE 1.3) to negotiate the entire six pool fishway, when compared to small adults. Correlation analysis between hydraulic variables and fish transit time yielded different results. Correlations were found to be the highest between the horizontal component of Reynolds shear stress and fish transit time, particularly for smaller size-individuals (r ¼ À0.45; p < 0.001), highlighting this variable as a key-parameter which strongly determines the movements of Iberian barbel. The present study identified key factors on Iberian barbel movements that may have direct application to future fishway designs for this species and for other 'weak' swimmers.

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We compared two Denil fishways, located on the west (low velocity, 10% slope) and east (high velocity, 20% slope) sides of the Mannheim weir, Grand River, Ontario, for use by upstream-migrating white suckers Catostomus commersoni and smallmouth bass Micropterus dolomieu. Mark-recapture and radiotelemetry were used to assess attraction and fish passage. Movement of 85 radio-tagged fish was monitored continuously during spring and early summer of 1995 and 1996. Attraction and passage efficiencies of white suckers at the west fishway were approximately 50%, and 55%, respectively. Attraction efficiency of white suckers at the east fishway was approximately 59%, and passage efficiency was 38%. The attraction and passage efficiencies of smallmouth bass at the west fishway were approximately 82% and 36%, respectively. At the east fishway, attraction efficiency of smallmouth bass was approximately 55%, and passage efficiency was 33%. There was an exponential decline in the numbers of both species that used each fishway relative to water velocity. The maximum water velocity used by white suckers was 0.96 m/s and that used by smallmouth bass was 0.99 m/s. Distracting flows near the west fishway appeared to affect attraction. Both fishways passed equal numbers of smallmouth bass per year, and smallmouth bass that used the east fishway were significantly larger than individuals that used the west fishway. In contrast, more than twice as many white suckers used the west fishway, and these fish were significantly larger than those that used the east fishway. Differences in passage were related to burst and critical swimming speeds and the use of velocity refugia within the fishways.