Earlier this week, a video shot through the Twitter feed fray with the velocity of a fish hurtling through a pneumatic tube.
The short video (set to house music, strangely) is a compilation of clips showing variations of the fish-shooting technology that Washington-based company Whooshh first developed five years ago. Not only has the video given the internet an ideal subject of absurdist fascination to dethrone last week’s 30-50 feral hogs, it’s also raised a lot of questions, like, “Wait, what?”, and “How does the fish feel about this?” and, “Can they potentially do this with humans?” (I can’t be the only person who was wondering this.)
For answers, I got on the phone with Vince Bryan III, CEO of Whooshh Innovations and inventor of the Salmon Canon (purposely spelled with only one “n” to distinguish the eco-friendly invention from a murderous weapon). His company’s name is derived from the sound fish make as they fly over the high dams that otherwise may block their upstream migratory routes, preventing them from spawning (declining salmon stocks are an issue of critical importance in the Pacific north-west).
...
Do you have any plans to make a human-sized cannon?
Only to the extent that we’ll move sturgeon at some point. Large, 200-plus pound sturgeon, and that will require us to make a larger tube. And at that point we’ve got a long list of volunteers who have said that they would like to be the first, and if somebody wants to do it, they’re welcome to try.
...
