Lake Sturgeon (Acipenser fulvescens) Use of a Fish Ladder in the Eastmain River in Mid-Northern Québec, Canada

Lake sturgeon (Acipenser fulvescens) use of a fish ladder in the Eastmain River in mid-northern Québec, Canada. 

In 2002, Hydro-Québec began the construction of the Eastmain-1 hydro-electric development on the Eastmain River.  To maintain the water level in the reduced-flow stretch of the river, a weir was built with a fish pass to maintain access for lake sturgeon to a spawning site.  A monitoring program to confirm the  integrity and use of the fish pass was implemented in 2006.  Over one third of the sturgeons tagged since 2007 were detected at least once in the fish pass during the first five years of monitoring.   Of all the pit-tagged lake sturgeons tracked in the middle of the fish pass from 2008 to 2014, approximately 40% got through it. Although this successful upstream migration percentage could be higher, some other factors such as the age structure of the population, the low number of mature females or the difficulty to locate the entrance of the fish pass could explain the results so far. 

¹ Hydro-Québec,75 René Lévesque, Montréal, Québec, Canada, H2Z 1A4