AMHERST — Boyd Kynard of Amherst founded the BK-Riverfish environmental consulting business under the premise that too many fish in rivers throughout the United States and around the world are impeded by dams, unable to complete their migratory journeys.
“What’s really important and not being addressed? The answer was really clear to me: we don’t have a fishway, a fish ladder, for stream fish,” says Kynard, who is also the company CEO.
“If you need to pass over a dam, good freaking luck, there’s nothing for you in the fish passage world,” he adds.
Now, Kynard, 86, and 18 years removed from retiring as a research biologist for the U.S. Geological Survey at the Silvio O. Conte Anadromous Fish Research Laboratory in Turners Falls, has a burgeoning business that seeks to improve aquatic ecosystems by designing and engineering patented fish ladders.
With a home office in Amherst and a 1,000-square-foot laboratory inside the expansive Renovators Supply Building at 1 River St. in Erving, BK-Riverfish was recently selected to be featured in two short films, known as “Tomorrow’s Catch: Securing our Future Fisheries,” which were produced in partnership with the American Fisheries Society and the United Kingdom-based strategic content creator Content With Purpose.
With both films, along with a soon-to-be published research paper in the scientific journal “Transactions,” Kynard said it’s an exciting time for the small, family operation, with his son Brian Kynard, co-founder and lead researcher, and daughter Kari Ridge, director of communications, the other two employees.
“Most fisheries experts are calling the stream fishes the most endangered or threatened group of invertebrates in the U.S.,” Kynard said. “We have a fishway that solves a lot of these problems.”
Since starting the company, Kynard has learned a lot about fish behavior, with a big part of the challenge figuring out how to get fish over dams. There is a lack of previous research, because, he observes, “nobody ever publishes failure.”
The testing began by setting up a long wooden flu, 3-feet wide, on cinder blocks at a 10% slope, with a hydraulic pump to take a large pool of water from one end to the other to mimic a river’s rushing water. Narrowing this flu to 2-feet wide, and with side baffles every 18 inches, eddies are formed and a fishway is created “that is maximum at dissipating energy,” Kynard said.
Bringing in 12 species of local fish in April, May and June, the idea was to see whether they could get to the top of the simple flu. The eddies that formed gave the fish, even the smallest, the opportunity for rest. “Fish are never more than 18 inches away from a resting area,” he said.
Trial and error reached the desired result, getting the water velocity down to 30 to 40 centimeters per second, which was right at the edge of being too high, so then they diminished the flu’s grade to 8%.
Finally, fish as small as 2 inches passed from end to end. “That was our goal,” Kynard said.
After this, the company needed to test the product in the wild, as well, and fabricated a fish ladder with help from an Amherst welder. That became the fishway for the medium-size Eel River in Indiana, where the Stockdale Mill dam has been for two centuries.
Since 2017, four years of data show that 51 species have passed through this fishway, from 1.5-inch darters to 2-foot bass. The 75-foot long fish ladder was made from 7-foot sections and covered with a steel grate to keep debris out, and for easy self-cleaning and flushing out.
Ridge said 80% of species in the river are using the fish ladder, and that fish are now traveling miles beyond where they had been spawning, meaning a return to their ancestral breeding grounds.
“It is still in their DNA to know they need to reach these places upstream,” Ridge said. “The ladder is connecting these populations of fish that have been segmented since the dam was built 200 years ago, making the populations stronger and improving the entire ecosystem along that stretch of the Eel River.”
The fish ladder has also become a popular attraction.
“It’s right on the river and people have picnics there,” Ridge said. “It’s become a beloved thing.”
The newest fish ladders are fabricated in Vermont, mostly from SAE 304 stainless steel, either 3/16-inch or one-quarter inch, or aluminum. The modular build costs around $200,000, from design to installation. Ridge said BK-Riverfish has already factored in tariffs and is not expected to increase the costs for the materials.
While the company can jump on the design right away, often the delays in getting a fish ladder in place are associated with the necessary permitting.
BK-Riverfish is currently working on a fishway for the Jones River watershed in Kingston, partnering with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, and another in Illinois, partnering with the The Conservation Foundation. In both cases on-site visits are made before determining the best fit for a new fish ladder.
But there are no height or length restrictions, meaning a fishway can be made for any river. “Theoretically, there’s no limit,” Kynyrd said.
As such, the Holyoke Dam on the Connecticut River, where a fish lift has been in place for shortnose sturgeon, a fish Kynard has studied extensively, could instead have a fish ladder that might be even more effective.
Brian Kynard said to be selected for the film acknowledges the importance of stream fish and, along with the research paper, will put to rest what is taught: that stream fish don’t migrate.
“It’s going to blow people’s socks’ off,” Kynard said.
The videos can be viewed at https://contentwithpurpose.co.uk/afs/tomorrowscatch/
“This series has been an incredible undertaking in storytelling from across North America and around the world,” Max Smith, founder and managing director at Content With Purpose, said in a statement. “From Alaska and the Yukon to Texas and the arctic fisheries of Norway, it’s been a pleasure to help champion the work of inspiring people and organizations dedicated to advancing a more sustainable future for fisheries, aquatic ecosystems and the communities reliant on them.”
Since founding the company, Kynard said another aspect of his work has been offering advice from his years of knowledge, and offering tours and insights to groups such as Biocitizen, the Westhampton summer environmental program, including one summer examining the drop in the lamprey eel population in local rivers.
“That part of the business is consulting,” Kynard said. “That’s really just me, what I know and my experiences.”
But the business will continue to grow and make places better, such as changing from where there is one population of fish downstream of dams and another type of population upstream, with mussels also being lost because the host fish for their larvae are blocked from parts of the river.
“The thing about fish ladders is to restore the aquatic habitat, that’s the whole thing,” Boyd Kynard said. “It’s meant to solve that problem and restore the aquatic ecosystem in its entirety, rather than being segmented.”