Salmon expected to start arriving soon at Fraser River landslide: DFO

Parts of a pneumatic fish pump, dubbed the salmon cannon, have arrived at the site of a massive landslide along B.C.’s Fraser River, where Fisheries and Oceans Canada expects some salmon to begin arriving soon.

Gwil Roberts, director of the department’s landslide response team, said six 160-metre tubes of different sizes are being suspended along the canyon wall above the river.

A fish ladder that Roberts said is nearly complete would attract salmon and guid them into a holding pond before they enter the fish pump and tube system that will take them up river to their spawning grounds.

The system is leased from a Seattle-based company and includes a scanner that measures the size of the fish to send them into the appropriate tube.

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The largest tube is about 25 centimetres in diameter, Roberts said, and the system is more gentle than the “salmon cannon” label suggests.

He said a deceleration mechanism would slow the salmon down and deposit them gently upstream after the fish have travelled about 20 metres per second for 20 seconds.