Salmon cannon shoots fish back on track

A company called Whooshh Innovations has developed a ‘Salmon Cannon’ for speeding the fish along their uphill battle for survival.

The company initially designed its tubes to transport fruit without damaging it, but tweaked the design for our scaly friends so that they could easily traverse hydroelectric dams that have blocked their traditional migrations. 

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“So we put a tilapia in the fruit tube,”said Todd Deligan, Whooshh’s vice president. “It went flying and we were like, ‘huh check that out’.”

Five years later the company has tailor made tubes for transporting salmon. Tests are being conducted at Roza Dam in Washington state.

Wildlife already do innovative things to get salmon past manmade barriers, putting them on trucks, loading them onto boats, and in a few cases, lifting them by helicopter.

"The tubes could be a less labor-intensive and more effective method, plus it would be less traumatizing to the fish than getting caught and driven around on a truck," said Deligan.