Strobe Lights Used to Scare Fish
Scientists trying to keep trout and salmon out of the deadly turbines of the Grand Coulee Dam are trying a trick from the days of disco: strobe lights.
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YAKIMA, Wash. (AP) - Three high-powered strobes now flash from the bottom of a barge near the dam, creating a curtain of illumination that scientists hope will scare away rainbow trout and landlocked sockeye salmon called kokanee. The goal is to keep them in Lake Roosevelt, the reservoir behind the dam.
Whether the strobes will work or not remains to be seen.
``If they do, it has the potential for use worldwide as a fisheries management tool,' said Richard LeCaire, who manages the Chief Joseph Kokanee Enhancement Project for the Colville Confederated Tribes.
The 1930s construction of Grand Coulee Dam, the largest U.S. hydropower producer, brought an end to oceangoing fish runs on the Upper Columbia River, which forms the southeast boundary of the Colville Indian Reservation.
To compensate for the loss of the fish runs, the Bonneville Power Administration pays for two hatcheries which dump more than 1 million kokanee and 500,000 trout into the 130-mile-long Lake Roosevelt each year.
However, thousands of those fish head downstream annually, and an estimated 402,000 enter one of the 24 turbines at the dam.
``Once they're out of Lake Roosevelt ... they're not really a value to us,' LeCaire said Tuesday.
Bob Johnson, a senior research scientist with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, said similar strobe lights had been used to keep kokanee away from the Dworshak Dam at Orofino, Idaho.
``They've shown a remarkable deterring effect on kokanee at Dworshak,' Johnson said.
As for the three-year experiment that started June 30 at Grand Coulee Dam, he said it's too early to tell if the lights are startling the fish or not.
Researchers from the lab, the Colville tribes, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Geological Survey are just starting to analyze the data from sonar used to track the reaction of the fish.
Whether the strobes will work or not remains to be seen.
``If they do, it has the potential for use worldwide as a fisheries management tool,' said Richard LeCaire, who manages the Chief Joseph Kokanee Enhancement Project for the Colville Confederated Tribes.
The 1930s construction of Grand Coulee Dam, the largest U.S. hydropower producer, brought an end to oceangoing fish runs on the Upper Columbia River, which forms the southeast boundary of the Colville Indian Reservation.
To compensate for the loss of the fish runs, the Bonneville Power Administration pays for two hatcheries which dump more than 1 million kokanee and 500,000 trout into the 130-mile-long Lake Roosevelt each year.
However, thousands of those fish head downstream annually, and an estimated 402,000 enter one of the 24 turbines at the dam.
``Once they're out of Lake Roosevelt ... they're not really a value to us,' LeCaire said Tuesday.
Bob Johnson, a senior research scientist with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, said similar strobe lights had been used to keep kokanee away from the Dworshak Dam at Orofino, Idaho.
``They've shown a remarkable deterring effect on kokanee at Dworshak,' Johnson said.
As for the three-year experiment that started June 30 at Grand Coulee Dam, he said it's too early to tell if the lights are startling the fish or not.
Researchers from the lab, the Colville tribes, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Geological Survey are just starting to analyze the data from sonar used to track the reaction of the fish.
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