How this tiny fish casts a big shadow over health of Niagara River

A front-page article in the Buffalo News about the decline of the emerald shiner, a small fish key to the local ecosystem that struggles to swim against the strong currents in the Niagara River, reports on research by Kendra Vorenkamp and Brandon Sansom, both students in the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering, who are conducting an experiment to test the strength and endurance of the shiner in a controlled recirculating hydraulic flume, in the hope of designing fish passage structures in the Niagara River to help the shiners get where they need to go. The article also quotes Joseph Atkinson, professor of civil, structural and environmental engineering, who said, “The ultimate goal of this project is to help them get upstream.”

Read the story here.