View the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Fish Telemetry: Improving the Sustainability of Hydropower one Tag at a Time video on YouTube.
New technologies are necessary to understand and improve fish migrations in rivers with hydropower projects. With funding from the Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO), scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) are meeting this need with a series of advanced fish tags to monitor the effects of hydropower on migratory fish like salmon, eel, and lamprey.
Data from the tags lets researchers map the precise 3-D location of fish and determine habitat use, behavior, timing and duration of movements, and if fish are able to complete their migration. This information helps make dams more fish-friendly by providing insights utilities can use to revise hydropower operations or alter structures, like fish ladders, to make them more effective.
The nation has the potential to unlock nearly 50 gigawatts of hydropower generation and storage capacity by 2050—but only if hydropower’s contributions toward meeting the nation’s energy needs are consistent with the objectives of environmental stewardship and water use management. WPTO makes early-stage investments to accelerate the development and commercialize of new hydropower technologies like PNNL’s fish telemetry tags to ensure environmental issues are addressed for sustainable hydropower growth.
For more information about PNNL’s hydropower research, click here.