General Fish

General Fish

Every species of fish has slightly different physiology and hearing characteristics.

Decades of experience and world-leading expertise in aquatic biology have given FGS a unique perspective, as well as informing laboratory and field studies. This scientific approach has allowed us to achieve over 95% deflection efficiency for the most sensitive species, and more than 60% across all species.

Our work often brings us to locations featuring tens of different species, although we will sometimes see in excess of 100.

In these situations, we break the population down into three categories of hearing sensitivity before developing an appropriate model:

• High sensitivity – hearing specialist species, with mechanisms that couple the swim bladder to the inner ear. Deterrence of at least 80% is expected, although this is often closer to 100%. Examples include carp and herring.

• Moderate sensitivity – hearing generalists which have a swim bladder but no specialist mechanism. Deterrence efficiency of 50% to 80% is expected. Examples include cod, whiting and salmon.

• Low sensitivity – hearing generalists with no swim bladder or other hearing specialisation. Lower efficiency is expected, although acoustic solutions can be combined with light-based systems and fish recovery and return systems to improve deflection and recovery rates. Examples include flatfish and gobies.

For more details on the systems FGS has developed for different fish species, click on the links below.