A Wonderful Fishy World

Have you ever stopped to take a look at the world that a fish lives in? For us it’s such a dark and mysterious place but that is not all that captures us, it is the fact that the fish not only live but also thrive in such an environment. But how do they do it? How do they manage?

Well let’s see, shall we?

Everybody knows that fish have gills. The gills are what make it possible for the fish to breath under water, every gill is made up of curved arches of cartilage on this cartilage are little gill filaments which , to make a long story short, allow the water to pass next to tiny capillaries which absorb the oxygen. Everybody knows that, at least I hope everybody knows that, it is basic fish knowledge.

Something that maybe fewer people know is the fact that fish have a swim bladder; this is the organ that allows the fish to stay in one place without having to tread water as we do. The swim bladder does this by filling up with oxygen from the blood stream. How does it get the oxygen out of the blood stream? There is a little organ attached to the side, this is what collects the oxygen and inflates the swim bladder. Up until now you might say…boring, but did you know that it is because of the swim bladder that the fish can go to depths of up to seven thousand feet or more?

Every diver knows the fact that when you swim up and down in water that deep you have to pressurize or depressurize yourself (or you would either explode or implode); fish manage to do this with the swim bladder, by pressurizing the fish is able to go to depths that we can't even dream of, our little fishy has to take care though and not try to go about pressurizing and depressurizing too fast or he could seriously injure himself, even to the point of losing his life.

If we take an even closer look at fish and the way that they use their swim bladders, we would find that some fish don't only use it for going into the deep blue sea or to stay in one place, there are fish that use their swim bladder to make certain noises such as the catfish, other fish use their swim bladder to breath out of the water, like the lungfish and of course there are the fish that don't even have swim bladders, they found other ways to stay buoyant...I guess some fish just like to be different.

Talking about different, how many people do you know who can produce their own electricity, with their own body? There are many fish that can do just that, they have special organs that can either produce light or even electricity...this is usually used for predatory reasons but there are some fish that just want to be able to see in the dark.

It is usually the fish that can only be found in the depths of the sea that produce light, and it is a light so strong that it can pierce the thickest night, it can light up places that have not seen light for thousands of years, but like I said, most of those fish have dark intentions on their side because all they are trying to do is to attract a smaller fish so that they can have a good supper. The fish that produce electricity are the electric eel and the electric catfish, they also use their abilities for food. The biggest electric eel can output enough electricity to electrocute a grown man!

Fish are such amazing creatures, you know man thinks that he knows so much about everything, but I think that God is not willing to give up all of His secrets so soon. I believe that there is much more out there to see and to discover. Not just weird fish organs, if we were to stop and take a closer look at the world around us I think that we would be amazed at what we would find.

Yes, fish are amazing creatures!

by: Claudia Miclaus