Thursday May 7, 2015
Chico News and Review –
It might be difficult to grasp at first how shooting salmon from a “cannon” is helpful for the fish—let alone a viable means of re-establishing a salmon run.
But in the more remote reaches of Upper Bidwell Park, where a decades-old fish ladder sits in disrepair and prevents most salmon from proceeding higher into the watershed to spawn, using newly available technology to help them clear the obstruction is a legitimate option. At least, that’s an opinion shared by local eco-firm FISHBIO and Whooshh Innovations, a company based in Bellevue, Wash., that designs and produces vacuum-powered transport systems to launch fish past manmade dams and diversions.
Referring to the systems as “salmon cannons” was an internal joke that Whooshh shared with the press last fall, explained Todd Deligan, the company’s vice president. The story went viral and was eventually picked up by HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, which ran a segment including a clip set to classical music of airborne salmon in slow-motion and then Oliver shooting plastic fish at rival talk-show hosts.
As much as Whooshh reveled in the national attention, the term “cannon” is misleading, Deligan said.