Analysis of Ichthyomechanical Data for Fish Passage or Exclusion System Design

Fish speed and stamina, locomotion, and the mechanics of fish swimming, are key to the development and design of passage, exclusion, and guidance systems such as fishways (including culverts), fish screens, fish barriers (including sea lamprey velocity barriers), and fish louvers. The large amount of data available, although primarily from laboratory respirometer studies and unevenly distributed between species, offered an opportunity to consider its systematic application to the development, design, and testing of such devices. With this motive, comprehensive searches were made and literature on fish swimming performance tests was compiled, and published data were entered on spreadsheets. This data base includes the following information: scientific and common fish species name, swimming mode, fish length (l in m), swimming speed (U in m/s), endurance or time to fatigue (t in s), water temperature during testing, life stage (e.g. juvenile or adult), test method (e.g. constant or increasing velocity), number of fish tested, regressions of swimming speed versus fish length for specific endurance times as reported in the literature, publication reference (author and date), and relevant comments (Katopodis and Gervais 1991). The data base may be consulted for information on specific species, although many species either have very limited data or are not represented at all. The data base, which is available on request, is presently been revised and updated. Investigators with additional data which do not appear in primary publications, are encouraged to provide it for inclusion.