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The future of fish passage science, engineering, and practice

Silva, A.T.; Lucas, M.C.; Castro-Santos, T.; Katopodis, C.; Baumgartner, L.J.; Thiem, J.D.; Aarestrup, K.; Pompeu, P.S.; O'Brien, G.C.; Braun, D.; Burnett, N.J.; Zhu, D.Z.; Fjeldstad, H-P.; Forseth, T.; Rajaratnam, N.; Williams, J.G.; Cooke, S.J.

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Authors

A.T. Silva

T. Castro-Santos

C. Katopodis

L.J. Baumgartner

J.D. Thiem

K. Aarestrup

P.S. Pompeu

G.C. O'Brien

D. Braun

N.J. Burnett

D.Z. Zhu

H-P. Fjeldstad

T. Forseth

N. Rajaratnam

J.G. Williams

S.J. Cooke



Abstract

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 efficient fishways, with minimal passage delay and post-passage impacts, requires adaptive management and continued innovation. While the use of fishways in river restoration demands a transition towards fish passage at the community scale, advances in selective fishways are also needed to manage invasive fish colonization. Because of the erroneous view in some literature and communities of practice that fish passage is largely a proven technology, improved international collaboration, information sharing, method standardization and multidisciplinary training are needed. Further development of regional expertise is needed in South America, Asia and Africa where hydropower dams are currently being planned and constructed.

Citation

Silva, A., Lucas, M., Castro-Santos, T., Katopodis, C., Baumgartner, L., Thiem, J., …Cooke, S. (2018). The future of fish passage science, engineering, and practice. Fish and Fisheries, 19(2), 340-362. https://doi.org/10.1111/faf.12258

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Sep 25, 2017
Online Publication Date Nov 28, 2017
Publication Date Mar 1, 2018
Deposit Date Nov 12, 2017
Publicly Available Date Feb 27, 2018
Journal Fish and Fisheries
Print ISSN 1467-2960
Electronic ISSN 1467-2979
Publisher Wiley
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 19
Issue 2
Pages 340-362
DOI https://doi.org/10.1111/faf.12258

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Published Journal Article (Advance online version) (977 Kb)
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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Advance online version © 2017. The Authors. Fish and Fisheries published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd This 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.





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