Re: Floating and sinking

["Paul Camp" <pjcamp@coastal.edu>]

> I have some followup questions which I will send to him, too. The Cartesian
> diver example tells me that as a fish descends it becomes less bouyant.
> This could lead to a runaway feedback in which the fish couldn't reinflate
> its swim baldder fast enough to stay bouyant, and an explosive problem as a
> fish ascends and becomes increasingly bouyant, perhaps faster than it can
> reabsorb the gas from the swim bladder. I have a picture of a herring rising
> like a rocket through the water.
>
> Leigh

This does happen but mostly when you go fishing and haul the fish up 
faster than he wants to go. For the most part, according to the 
marine biologists here, though the absorption of gas through the swim 
bladder/blood interface is not instantaneous, it is pretty fast and 
tends to keep up with the swimming speed of the fish. Also, most fish 
are pretty stratified in their environmental preferences so they 
don't go up or down all that far anyway.

Paul J. Camp                   "The Beauty of the Universe
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