Evaluation of Adult White Sturgeon Swimming Capabilities and Applications to Fishway Design

Abstract

Concern over passage of sturgeon barriers, has focused attention on fishway design that accommodates its swimming performance. In order to evaluate swimming performance, regarding fish ladder type partial barriers, wild adult sturgeons, Acipenser transmontanus; 121-176 cm fork length, were captured in the San Francisco Bay Estuary and Yolo Bypass toe drain. Hydrodynamic forces and kinematic parameters for swimming performance data were collected in a laboratory flume under three flow conditions through barriers and ramp. The experiments were conducted in a 24.4 m long, 2.1 m wide, and 1.62 m deep aluminum channel. Two geometric configurations of the laboratory model were designed based on channel characteristics that have been identified in natural river systems. At a given swimming speed and fish size, the highest guidance efficiencies of successful white sturgeon passage as a function of flow depth, flow velocity, turbulence intensity, Reynolds number, Froude number and shear velocity observed in the steady flow condition, tested with the horizontal ramp structure, occurred at an approach velocity of 0.33 ms -1 . The guidance efficiency of successful sturgeon passage increased both with increasing flow velocity and Froude number, and decreased both with the flow depth and the turbulence intensity. This study also provides evidence that tail beat frequency increases significantly with swimming speed, but tail beat frequency decreases with fish total length. Stride length increases both with swimming speed and fish total length. The importance of unsteady forces is expressed by the reduced frequency both with swimming speed and fish total length. Regression analysis indicates that swimming kinematic variables are explained by the swimming speed, the reduced frequency and the fish total length. The results emphasize the importance of fish ladder type patchiness when a fishway is designed for the passage of sturgeon.

Aerobic swimming performance of juvenile Schizothorax chongi (Pisces, Cyprinidae) in the Yalong River, southwestern China

“…In recent decades, wild Schizothorax have declined dramatically in size, population and diversity (Zhu & Chang, 2008). Inaccessibility to suitable spawning habitat and overfishing are two important causes (Cheong et al, 2006). Protecting wild Schizothorax now has been appraised as critical by the government of Sichuan Province.…”

“…Swimming ability and behavior of a species are important factors for the hydraulic design of fishways (Yagci, 2010). The relevance of swimming behavior and performance to fish passage issues has motivated some of the work in this field and continues to receive attention (Cheong et al, 2006). To improve the effectiveness of fishways used by a migrating species, a study of their swimming behavior is critical.…”

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

“…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.…”