PITTSBURGH — Salmon may now have their own version of human air conditioning.
When water temperatures get too hot, fish can become stressed or even die. In rivers, Atlantic salmon and other cold-water species sometimes escape the heat by flocking to cooler areas, which often arise near groundwater springs or relatively cool tributaries.
Lots of work has been done to preserve and augment these naturally occurring refuges, said Smith, of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, “but there hasn’t really been an emphasis or focus on if we can create cold-water habitat.”
So she and her colleagues pumped groundwater that was about 9° Celsius (or about 48° Fahrenheit) from a nearby well into the river, manifesting an artificial plume of water that could be as much as 20 degrees Celsius cooler than the surrounding water.
2023-10-25 08:00:00
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