European Ocean Biodiversity Information System

Navigation locks play an important role for ship navigation on canals and other regulated waterways worldwide. Unfortunately, these structures may severely impact the aquatic ecosystem and freshwater fish in particular. In Belgium (Europe), the Albert canal connecting the Meuse river to the Scheldt river, is an important migration route for European eel (critically endangered) and Atlantic salmon (vulnerable). During their downstream migration these fish are hampered by six subsequent navigation lock complexes present in the canal. Three of which are by-passed by a small channel leading to a hydropower plant with large Archimedes screw turbines. In the coming years, three more such hydropower plants are to be installed next to three of six ship lock complexes. The Archimedes screws function both as pump and turbine (hydropower generator). Two dimensional fine scale positioning, as well as impact assessment through assessment of fish injury and mortality at the Archimedes screws, was performed to better understand the overall impact of these anthropogenic structures on diadromous fish, such as eel and salmon.

This dataset was collected using infrastructure provided by VLIZ and INBO funded by the Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO) as part of the Belgian contribution to LifeWatch. The study was commissioned by the Vlaamse Waterweg NV. Data were exported from the European Tracking Network data portal (http://www.lifewatch.be/etn) developed by VLIZ using the ETN R package (https://inbo.github.io/etn/) developed by INBO. Field definitions can be found at https://inbo.github.io/etn/articles/etn_fields.html.