The Tube That Changed How the World Thinks About Fish Migration



Before Whooshh, the conversation about fish passage at dams was largely a conversation about how much it would cost and how long it would take. Fish ladders were the accepted answer. They required civil engineering, years of permitting, and substantial ongoing maintenance. For smaller operators and remote sites, those requirements were often prohibitive. The result was a category of fish barriers where passage was effectively off the table for economic reasons.


The fish cannon changed that conversation. Not immediately, and not without skepticism. When Whooshh demonstrated that a pneumatic tube could move salmon over a dam at 25 feet per second with no handling and no permanent civil structure, the fisheries management community's first response was understandably cautious. The technology looked unusual. The evidence for fish welfare outcomes was still accumulating.


What changed the conversation was the data. 


A 2014 study funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and conducted by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory assessed adult Chinook Salmon transport through the Whooshh system and found that survival, immune response, and egg viability outcomes were comparable to the conventional trap and haul benchmark. That's the standard the industry uses to define acceptable welfare outcomes for transported fish. The tube matched it without the handling.


The salmon cannon nickname that spread through social media was always a slight misrepresentation. The system uses differential air pressure of approximately 1 PSI, which is gentle rather than forceful. Fish travel through a misted, cool tube on a cushion of humidified air. But the nickname stuck because it communicated something real: this is a fundamentally different approach to moving fish past a barrier, and it works.


What Has a Decade of Deployment Demonstrated?


The product line has evolved significantly since that first demonstration. The PassagePortal systems, both the floating Model F and the land-based Model L, now integrate the full fish management platform that a conventional ladder cannot offer. Here's what a PassagePortal does that a fish ladder doesn't:

  • Classifies every fish individually using three cameras and nine images per fish through the updated FishL Recognition system

  • Routes native species upstream and diverts invasive species downstream based on real-time AI classification

  • Generates a verified, image-backed passage record for every fish automatically, without monitoring staff on site

  • Deploys in days rather than years, without civil construction

  • Operates 24/7 autonomously, including during the early-morning peak migration hours when conventional ladders are unstaffed


Why Does This Matter for Environmental Recovery?


The environmental case for better fish passage technology is more urgent now than it was in 2013 when Whooshh began. Wild salmon populations in the Pacific Northwest remain listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act. Climate-driven changes to river flows and water temperatures are compressing migration windows and reducing the margin for error in passage system performance.


A fish ladder that achieves 70% passage efficiency in a year with normal water conditions achieves less in a drought year. A pneumatic passage system with adjustable entry positioning, which can respond to the shifting water levels and thermal stratification that characterize summer drought conditions, is more resilient to exactly the conditions that are becoming more common.


What Does the Next Phase of Fish Passage Development Look Like?


The technology direction is toward greater integration between passage, monitoring, and data management. The FishL Recognition system in the PassagePortal generates real-time, species-level passage data that feeds directly into the management decisions that determine how a river is managed through a migration season. That integration, between the physical act of moving fish and the data infrastructure that informs what to do with that information, is where the field is heading.

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