A.    Project Background
Whooshh Innovations has developed a novel floating trap that is designed to attract and capture juvenile American (Anguilla rostrata) and European eels (Anguilla anguilla). These eels are catadromous, and as such, migrate upstream as juveniles and mature inland before out-migrating at maturity to the Sargasso Sea to spawn. The floating trap or Elverator™ is a pontoon-supported structure with wetted ramp surfaces that extend down into the water between the pontoon floats. Proprietary overlayed climbing substrate on these wetted surfaces enables the elver to follow the flow and climb up the ramps, at the top of which a rounded apex causes the animals to fall into a chamber and be trapped. Several different mechanisms then exist for retrieving the juveniles from the trap chambers.

As an anadromous species, Pacific lamprey (Entosphenus tridentatus) migrate upstream as adults, to spawn inland. Most of their freshwater lives are spent in a larval form as filter feeders in burrows within soft stream bottom substrates. After metamorphosis, juvenile/adult-form lamprey out-migrate to the ocean, where they stay for 1-7 years before returning to spawn. The adults have a jawless sucker-type mouth that attaches to host animals and fishes upon which they feed parasitically. As Pacific lamprey return to spawn, they swim upstream, usually along river bottoms, at times using their mouthparts to attach to rocks or other smooth substrates to maintain their position or facilitate their progress. They are capable of surviving for a period of time outside of the water, when needed, as in the case of climbing to seek passage beyond a barrier.  They can attach to smooth surfaces with their mouths and will often do so to get past rapids and waterfalls as they continue their upstream migration. Dams represent significant obstacles to lamprey, as they typically lack the optimal kind of wetted surfaces for them to climb, and many fish passage structures like fish ladders have hydraulic jumps and/or water velocities that are beyond this species’ ability to navigate. Damon Goodman (Trout Unlimited and then USFWS) and Stewart Reid (Western Fishes), have successfully shown that lamprey can ascend a wetted 4” heavy duty PVC fabric-reinforced hose over significant distances. Attracting migrating lamprey to the downstream entrance of such a hose is challenging, however. This project takes the existing Elverator™ and modifies it to accommodate adult Pacific lamprey based on the input of Ralph Lampman (Lamprey Research Biologist for the Yakama Nation Fisheries), tribal and regional partners (including CRITFC/Tribes, YN, CTUIR, NPT, CTWSO, etc) and other lamprey experts, to create a collector for Pacific lamprey. If the collector is shown to be successful at attracting lamprey and collecting them, the designed modifications of the Pacific Lamprey Collector would offer the opportunity to connect the collector with a passage tube  leading from the collection chamber to provide a complete Lamprey passage system.

B.    Project Objectives
The goal of this project is to design and fabricate modifications to the Elverator™, to collect adult Pacific lamprey. Following these changes, biologists from the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission (CRITFC) tribes will deploy the modified Elverator™, the Pacific Lamprey Collector, over a two-season period to assess the effectiveness of the collector to attract and engage Pacific lamprey to climb the ramps and be collected within the capture chamber. Ultimately, if the Pacific Lamprey Collector is successful, the modified Elverator™ design will be used to provide a complete passage solution by allowing collected lamprey to ascend the wetted flexible hose.
Supporting the Project Goal, the Project Objectives are as follows:
Objective 1: Gather specification requirements of Pacific lamprey attraction, climbing behavior and capture/containment challenges:  accomplished via collaboration with Tribal lamprey experts.
Objective 2: Produce Pacific Lamprey Collector prototype design 3-D model incorporating modifications to the Elverator™ designs to address the Pacific lamprey specification requirements.
Objective 3: Produce a single prototype Pacific Lamprey Collector.
Objective 4: Evaluate the prototype Pacific Lamprey Collector performance in a tank at the ODFW Bonneville  Hatchery, BPA owned Captive Brood Building (BON CBB), Year 1.
Objective 5: Identify and implement, if needed, limited adjustments to the built prototype to potentially improve performance based on the outcomes of Objective 4. (The scope of this project does not support a re-design and new prototype fabrication).
Objective 6: Evaluate the prototype Pacific Lamprey Collector performance at an in-river site (precise location is still to be determined), Year 2.
While the efficacy of the proposed solution for the target species is unknown, there is considerable cause for optimism that the modified Elverator™ trap, the Pacific Lamprey Collector, will be capable of attracting and collecting adult Pacific lamprey as they migrate upstream.