It’s been a while since we last shared any fish passage updates – and this one is worth the wait. With a long weekend ahead, you’ll have plenty of time to dig in!

The reality is that many of our current regulations and the information underpinning them have significant gaps and are overdue for reform.

The Fish Passage Action Team has put together the key principles behind assessing fish passage and designing effective fishways at stream-infrastructure crossings. Drawing on revisited foundational research, emerging knowledge, and extensive field experience, we’ve produced work we think is genuinely valuable:

• Presentation on hydraulic complexity & flow characteristics and how this affects fish.
• Document on reframing fish passage – from single metric & meaningless averages to structured complexity.

­ Click to view presentation ­ If fish passage matters to you and you care about getting it right, please read the document and review the PowerPoint. Then pass it along – to regulators, engineers, ecologists, and practitioners alike – so we can move beyond outdated designs and methodologies once and for all.
­ Click to view key principles document ­

The post Redefining Fish Passage Parameters appeared first on ATS Environmental.

Today we are looking at a couple of examples in Australia where a new type of tide gate has been installed to improve fish passage and upstream water quality.

First up is Cairns, where the site previously used six standard flap gates that were manually held open for fish passage and released during king tides or flood events.
One of these has now been replaced with a fully automated, adjustable stainless steel tide gate.  The remaining gates are expected to be upgraded in the near future.
The next site is in Mackay, where two large wooden gates were replaced with ATS FFGs to improve fish passage and reduce sedimentation through improved flushing.
The concept and function is same for both the Cairns and McKay versions. 
Note: The “double-skin” is for the extra strength required to cover the 3M span.
These two upgrades were commissioned to meet Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF) requirements. 

If you want to know more about Fish Friendly Tide/Flood Gates feel free to reply to this email!

The post Great news! Tide/Flood Gates need no longer be a fish barrier – there is a solution appeared first on ATS Environmental.

Baffles have proven a very effective way for providing fish passage in culverts.

We’ve been hard at work over the past few months developing an interactive culvert baffle design calculator.

We know culvert design can be a tricky subject to get your head around, and we were worried it could be putting some people off. Having seen a groundswell of culverts being designed to improve fish passage, we saw the need for a more standardised approach while still taking into account individual site characteristics.

We’re excited to announce a new resource for fish passage practitioners – the Culvert Baffle Design Tool, created by the Fish Passage Action Team and kindly hosted by ATS Environmental.
­ Click here to try it now – it’s free! ­ This free online tool takes the guesswork out of baffle design for new & exisitng culverts. Enter your culvert characteristics and the tool will automatically generate:

• A set of schematic drawings showing the baffle configuration
• A list of materials required, including baffle sizes, types, and fixings for installation

Any feedback would be most helpful.

The post Awesome Free Culvert Baffle Design Calculator appeared first on ATS Environmental.

Before the holidays, we were on the ground in Gisborne, on the east coast of New Zealand’s North Island, helping kick-start something exciting.

Gisborne District Council and local iwi (the Indigenous Māori tribes of the region) came together for a hands-on training day – learning to use the Structures in Waterways field app to start identifying barriers to fish passage across their area.
The app lets teams assess culverts and other in-stream structures in the field, recording characteristics to help determine whether they’re barriers to fish migration or not. All that data flows straight into a central Sharepoint, building a clear picture of what’s out there and where the priorities are.

But the data doesn’t just sit there. Once structures are assessed, the information feeds into planning for remediation – helping teams understand what materials are needed, estimate costs, and decide where to focus their efforts. 
Gisborne’s journey is just beginning, but to show you where this leads, here’s a snapshot from the Bay of Plenty region, where this same process is well underway.
Every dot represents a structure that’s been assessed. Every dot is progress.
We’ll be following Gisborne’s journey as they build their dataset and move toward remediation. Watch this space.

The post From training to action: Gisborne gets started appeared first on ATS Environmental.

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