Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center
Search fish passage bibliography
Mukherjee, A. B. (1987). Preliminary observations on the efficacy of fish locks in the Farakka Barrage. Pages 25 in Symposium on the Impact of Current Land Use Pattern and Water Resources Development on Riverine Fisheries, Barrackpore (India).
Various types of hydraulic structures and headworks such as dams, barrages, weirs, etc. constructed on many of rivers, have posed a threat to the migration of riverine fishes. This resulted in considerable fall in fish productivity in the river system. In most of the hydraulic structures, although different types of facilities (fish ladders, fishways, fish locks) have been provided to enable the fish to migrate upstream past the obstacles, it is reported that majority of the devices are hardly usable for the migrating fish. This is because of empirical design of most of the devices where due consideration has not been given to the performance and behaviour of the fish species that would utilise the pass for ascending upstream. Some preliminary observations made on the utility and effectiveness of the fish locks provided in the Farakka Barrage and their role to pass fish upstream over the barrage, having a rather wide range of heads, are presented.