Terms of Reference

Advice on Fish Swimming Performance Curves

Central and Arctic Regional Advisory Meeting

February 9, 2010
Teleconference

Co-chairs: Kathleen Martin and Roger Wysocki*

Context

Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) Central and Arctic (C&A) Habitat Management (HM) staff are required to review and/or provide advice on fish passage design criteria. To assist them with this work, two C&A HM staff developed fish swimming performance curves that estimate swimming distance, as a function of water velocity, for various groupings of fish species using data collected from the literature. The curves are intended to serve as guidelines in terms of water velocity criteria for fish passage, exclusion, and guidance systems such as fishways (including culverts), fish screens, fish barriers (including sea lamprey velocity barriers), and fish louvers.

C&A HM has requested advice from Science sector on whether the fish swimming performance analysis and results are credible and conclusions drawn are scientifically sound. Advice resulting from the science advisory meeting will be used to identify any problems and limitations with the analysis. The fish swimming performance curves will become the basis for guidelines developed by DFO C&A HM for reviewing or providing advice on fish passage design criteria.

Objectives

The objective of the meeting is to provide advice on the following aspects of the working paper on Fish swimming performance data base and analyses drafted by C. Katopodis and R. Gervais:

• completeness of the database used to develop the fish swimming performance curves,
• scientific validity of the analysis, results and conclusions reached, and
• limitations of the study.

Expected publications

The Regional Advisory meeting will generate a proceedings report that summarizes the discussions of the participants. It will be published in the Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat (CSAS) Proceedings Series on the CSAS website. Advice resulting from the meeting will be published as a Science Advisory Report and the working paper reviewed at the meeting, which provides the support for the advice, will be published as a CSAS Research Document.

Participation

DFO Science and Habitat sectors, U.S. Geological Survey and academia are invited to this advisory meeting.

*Updated February 1, 2011