Wednesday May 14, 2025
New Atlas —
Back in 2014, we heard about a so-called “fish gun” or “salmon cannon” that safely shot spawning fish up over river-blocking obstacles such as dams. Its successor has since entered use, most recently allowing herring to bypass a spillway for the first time in 80 years.
Manufactured by Seattle-based Whooshh Innovations, the salmon cannon’s actual name was the Whooshh Transport System. To recap our original coverage, it was basically a flexible plastic tube hooked up to a motorized air pump. One end of that tube was located in the river at the bottom of the dam, while the other was located up at the top.
The original “salmon cannon,” as it was dubbed on social media, was first used to get fish into a truck or when handling/transferring them into a hatchery or aquaculture operation. The fish were manually loaded into the bottom end of the system, where the lower air pressure inside sucked them in and up the tube. A pressure difference of about 2 PSI shot the fish along at 5 to 10 m/sec (16 to 32 ft/sec).
Although quite clever, the system was limited by the fact that the fish had to be hand-loaded into the tube. Not only was this time-consuming and labor-intensive, but it was also stressful for the fish. At the time, the company was looking into a method of enticing the fish to enter the setup voluntarily. That feature is now a standard part of the new-and-improved Whooshh Passage Portal.