Reducing Fish and Wildlife Impacts
Description
We need to add marine-power production to our alternative-energy portfolio, in the face of climate change and the extractive nature of fossil fuels and nuclear power. Although hydropower dams provide “green” energy, there are major fisheries impacts that might be better served by employing more marine-hydrokinetic (MHK) power, which the Biden administration thought might contribute 20% of future American energy production, when also including inland (river) hydrokinetic (RHK) devices. Together, MHK and RHK devices work underwater, in contrast to offshore windfarms. There are many different types of MHK devices that operate based on tides, waves, offshore-current, or thermal or salinity gradients.
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Speaker Bio
Dr. Vadas is a Research Scientist with WDFW-Habitat on biophysical issues for riparian/wetland, instream-flow, dam, fish-passage, overwater-structure, and marine-hydrokinetic topics for western > eastern Washington. Bob has over four decades of field experience on the habitat and ecohydrologic needs of freshwater and estuarine fishes, over half of it for western North America (the rest is for the East Coast). This includes sampling and modeling fish habitat across spatial scales, but also research at other trophic levels: wildlife, invertebrates, and plants of riparian and aquatic status.