Fish Cannon: Does The World's Most Famous Fish Tube Actually Work?
We get this question more than almost any other. Someone watches the video, the one with the salmon shooting through a tube in slow motion, and the first thing they ask is: is that real? Does it actually work? Do the fish survive? The short answer is yes. But the longer answer is more interesting. The fish cannon, as the internet named it back in 2014 when the original Whooshh demo video went viral, is a real, functioning technology. It's based on differential air pressure, the same basic principle you'd see in a pneumatic tube system at a bank drive-through, adapted over years of biological testing and engineering iteration to move live fish safely. The fish travel through a flexible, misted MigratorTube at around 25 feet per second on a cushion of cooled, humidified air. No net contact. No handling. No injury to scales or fins in properly deployed systems. What Actually Happens to a Fish During Passage? The entry is volitional. Fish swim into the system on their own, attracte...