A fish-friendly axial flow pump turns out to be eel safe, roach unfriendly and bream unsafe.

Additional and refurbished pumping stations are required to mitigate the intensifying occurrence of droughts and floodings. These installations negatively impact threatened freshwater fish populations due to the increased risk of injury and mortality when fish pass through them. Fish-friendly pumping installations have been proposed as a potential solution to reduce these risks.

Rethinking fish-friendliness of pumps by shifting focus to both safe and timely fish passage for effective conservation.

Globally, catadromous freshwater eels of the genus Anguilla are of conservation concern, including critically endangered European eel (Anguilla anguilla). Pumping stations that move river water to a higher elevation severely impact eels during their seaward spawning migration. Fish-friendly pumps can mitigate fish injury and mortality but here we uniquely rethink a fish-friendly pump as a fish passage solution.

Man-made flows from a fish's perspective: autonomous classification of turbulent fishway flows with field data collected using an artificial lateral line.

The lateral line system provides fish with advanced mechanoreception over a wide range of flow conditions. Inspired by the abilities of their biological counterparts, artificial lateral lines have been developed and tested exclusively under laboratory settings. Motivated by the lack of flow measurements taken in the field which consider fluid-body interactions, we built a fish-shaped lateral line probe.

Hydrodynamic pressure sensing with an artificial lateral line in steady and unsteady flows.

With the overall goal being a better understanding of the sensing environment from the local perspective of a situated agent, we studied uniform flows and Kármán vortex streets in a frame of reference relevant to a fish or swimming robot. We visualized each flow regime with digital particle image velocimetry and then took local measurements using a rigid body with laterally distributed parallel pressure sensor arrays. Time and frequency domain methods were used to characterize hydrodynamically relevant scenarios in steady and unsteady flows for control applications.