There are seven fishpasses on Prince of Wales Island, five
on the Craig Ranger District and two on the Thorne Bay Ranger
District. The fishpasses were constructed to allow anadromous fish access to habitat upstream of fish barriers, typically small
waterfalls. |
Fishpass flume that channels fish upstream around waterfall.
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Forest Service employee removing bedload from a fishpass flume.
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Fishpasses must be maintained annually. Fish staff from both Ranger Districts visit the fishpasses several times each year to make sure they are functioning properly and passing fish upstream. Methods for maintaining the fishpasses can be relatively simple.
Most maintenance problems require the use of shovels to remove built up bedload, or simply removing built up woody debris with your hands. Sometimes maintenance requires the use of a chainsaw to cut logs that may have wedged themselves into fishpass entrances. |
Sometimes they have other maintenance issues that require replacing parts of the fishpass, like replacing the lids on flumes or baffles that break up water flowing through flumes.
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Flowgate at inlet to Big Lake fishpass.
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Big Lake fishpass before modification.
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Big Lake fishpass after modification.
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Occasionally we find that the original design of the fishpass needs to be modified, and portions of the fishpass need to be retrofitted with a new design. We use a special Tongass Forest crew of fisheries engineers stationed in Petersburg to help us design and implement modifications to the fishpasses to make them function more efficiently. Retrofitting fishpasses can be expensive, and we have to compete with other Ranger Districts in the Alaska region for limited funds and use of the specialized fisheries engineering crew to make the retrofits happen. |
