Fish Elevator
We spent an amazing afternoon taking a tour of a local fish elevator! I thought it was incredibly interesting and I though many of you would find it interesting as well so decided to share it with you today.
We visited the Roger Barret Fishway on the Connecticut River in Holyoke Massachusetts. Many of you have heard of fish ladders, at the Holyoke Dam they have a fish lift. It is there to help with the migration of Shad, Sea Lamprey and other fish in the area. They built a wooden fish lift in 1873 that the fish really didn’t use. In 1955 they built the current fish lift. It’s one of the most successful fish lifts in the country. If you look at fish ladders on Wikipedia and go down to the section about fish lifts you will see that they mention this fish lift specifically. 🙂 You can find that here: Fish Ladder Wikipedia
A fish lift or elevator is just what it sounds like. 🙂 When the fish are migrating they swim into an area for collection below the elevator. They get moved onto the elevator and the gate closes behind them collecting them. The lift then lifts them up and moves them into an area where they are then counted and then released upstream.
This is a picture of the elevator shaft that the fish come up.
The picture of the fish that I used for the article is in the viewing area where they get counted. We also saw this striped bass that decided to go for a ride today as well.
There was a walkway that went out over the fish elevator to look at the dam. It was so beautiful out there. I also took a quick video that you can see here: Waterfall Video
This is the view from the overlook across the dam.
This is from the parking lot. There were a lot of blue herons! We had the best time watching them fish in the water.
It’s also a hydroelectric dam. It was quite neat to see that as well!!
I hope that you have an amazingly magickal day!
Much Love and Many Blessings,
Jasmeine Moonsong