What is Happy Fish?

Happy Fish was designed by landscape artist Bruno Doedens to symbolize how art can bring people together. The fish’s big smile symbolizes the positive results that can come from people working together to create freer flowing waterways that connect fish, rivers, and people. Since 2016, Happy Fish statues have been hosted around the world, raising awareness about fish migration and projects that remove aging and unsafe dams and weirs or that remediate road culverts to restore river flows.

In September 2022, Trout Unlimited Canada oversaw the replacement of five road culverts (before – left) that were barriers to river and fish movements. The culverts were replaced with an open bottom geotextile-reinforced steel culvert (after – right) that restores movement of water, sediment, and fish and other animals along the stream.

Photo credit: Elliot Lindsay.

Where Happy Fish goes, there's happy people!

One of the largest barriers to fish passage on Prince of Wales island is the notorious Three-Mile creek culvert. This culvert has been prioritized for removal and designs are in the works! Happy Fish paid a visit to these undersized pipes with a team from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Removal of this culvert has been a collaborative effort between the USFWS, Southeast Alaska Watershed Coalition, and the Southeast Alaska Fish Habitat Partnership.

Happy Fish in Alaska

In 2016, Happy Fish met Kevin and Erin at the Bozeman Fish Technology Center to thank them for helping Happy Fish friends with their work. Thanks to the Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances (CCAA), the biologist Kevin Kappenman and Eco-Hydrologist Erin Ryan are researching swimming and passage studies with Arctic graylings using open-channel flumes and fish passage ladders.

Happy Fish in Montana

In November 2023, Happy Fish traveled to Palmer (Alaska) to attend the Matsu Salmon Habitat Partnership's annual Science and Conservation Symposium. Happy Fish brought awareness to fish passage work done across Alaska and made a splash with the conference attendees - even after braving a blizzard! (©Marianne Giannulis)

Symposium on Salmon Habitats

In 2017, FWS and National Park Service biologists and equipment operators took a photo with the Happy Fish statue standing where the dam once was on the Green River, in Kentucky (USA).

Happy Fish in Kentucky

On the migration around the USA in 2017, Happy Fish stopped in Nevada to recreate the migration route to Lake Tahoe along the Truckee River of the once thought to be extinct Lahontan cutthroat trout. In reality, a small, isolated population of this fish species is still present as it was brought to the National Fish Hatchery for rearing.

Happy Fish in Nevada

Hava Rohloff and Nicole Hebel, members of the YTT tribe, started their first hand-tool restoration project on Cemetery Creek in Southeast Alaska over the summer of 2023 (©Khrystl Brouillette-Gillam).

Happy Fish in Alaska

In April 2023, Happy Fish celebrated the return of river herring in the Plymouth streams (MA), Massachusetts, with Joshua Royte from TNC and Eric Hutchins from NOAA. NOAA and TNC shared efforts to restore the river herring population by removing six barriers on the 1.5-mile-long Town Brook.

Happy Fish in Massachusetts

Coast Salmon Partnership and Happy Fish had several adventures in Washington, in November 2023. Happy Fish visited the site where the Cold Water Connection campaign is underway, involving the removal of mini-dams and the reconnection of rivers on Washington's Olympic Peninsula (© Greg Fitz).

Happy Fish in Washington

In the summer of 2023, over fifty participants representing tribal communities, NGOs, and other organizations attended a restoration workshop, hosted by the Forest Service, on large woody habitats gathered on Prince of Wales Island (Alaska) (©Khrystl Brouillette-Gillam).

Happy Fish in Alaska

In December 2023, Happy Fish visited the National Fish Passage Partner Workshop “Scaling Up for People and Fish”, which was held in Charleston, South Carolina. More than 100 practitioners and agency funders discussed fish passage needs across the US. (©Debbie Hart)

Happy Fish in Charleston

Happy Fish visited and took a few photos with the 2023 NOAA Research Fellows at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Happy Fish with NOAA Fellows

Happy Fish traveled around Michigan, USA in 2023. In this photo Happy Fish is swimming in Hunt Creek located in northeast Michigan. At this site, poor functioning road culverts were replaced by NOAA and Huron Pines with a bridge (shown). The bridge restored access to habitat for native brook trout and many other aquatic species.

Happy Fish in Michigan

Request a Happy Fish

If you would like to host Happy Fish to raise awareness and public engagement with a river restoration project, please complete the form below and a member of the Happy Fish team will review your application and get back to you with ideas for bringing Happy Fish to your area.

Happy Fish sits in Fort Goff Creek at a site where a road culvert prohibited juvenile and adult fish movements most of the year. With the culvert removed and the bridge (pictured) built, now Steelhead and Coho and Chinook salmon have access to 4.2 miles of cold, clean water. Happy Fish joined students from Seiad Valley Elementary School who came to get their feet wet and learn about the importance of habitat restoration!

Photo credit: USFWS