This Billion-Dollar Plan to Save Salmon Depends on a Giant Fish Vacuum

By propublica.org.

Many endorse opening dams and letting fish coast the natural current as the best way to avoid extinction. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has other ideas.

To free salmon stuck behind dams in Oregon’s Willamette River Valley, here’s what the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has in mind:

Build a floating vacuum the size of a football field with enough pumps to suck up a small river. Capture tiny young salmon in the vacuum’s mouth and flush them into massive storage tanks. Then load the fish onto trucks, drive them downstream and dump them back into the water. An enormous fish collector like this costs up to $450 million, and nothing of its scale has ever been tested.

Read more at propublica.org.

Sockeye Salmon | NOAA Fisheries