In the interest of healthy debate and discussion, here is one to consider......


How do fish swim?


Most people would automatically answer, 'With their tails!'

However, I recall, as a teenager, reading a very intersting article by an engineer who reckoned that fish swim more with their heads than anything else.

His claim that fish used their heads by moving them slightly side to side to create alternate high and low pressures on either side of their bodies and hence creating a process similar to an airplane wing was very persuave in it's argument. Indeed, he formulated that the tail is the 'anchor' for the fish to propel itself forward using the head.

He cited examples of leaping dolphins and the argument that a dolphin would need circa 100hp to propel itself out of the water and there was certainly not a 100 horses hiding in a dolphins tail but that if you carefully watched a dolphin swimming at speed you can see that it slightly nods its head up and down as oppose to a fish which wags it's head side to side - this being because a dolphins tail lies horizontal whilst a fish's tail is vertical.

Of course, one can understand this 'head swimming' argument by virtue of teh fact that once you get a fishes head out of teh water, it 'loses it's fight' ; thus losing the abillity to swim anymore. likewise, if you foul a fish in the tail, it fights far longer as the 'anchor' is locked even more firmly in place.


Certainly, you can more clearly see this 'wave action' of swimming in long bodied fish such as Barracuda, Sailfish, Wahoo and king macks. Watch a long bodied fish propelling itself up to full speed and you can clearly see how the head moves quickly from side-to-side as it winds itself up for the sprint!

His other argument when asked about barrell bodied fish such as tuna was that it actually cemented his claim...........for those that have fought and landed tuna, you will notice how your line will waggle from side to side when the tuna is fighting under the boat i.e. this is the tuna trying to swim with it's head - if it was swimming from its tail then the line would be stationaryas the head wouldnt move.

Also intersting to note is that, generally, the fastest fish in water are those with sickle shaped, hard tails such as wahoo and sailfish whereas slower fish have softer more floppy tails such as carp and cod. How the hell can a fish such as a wahoo with such a small tail area still swim so fast unless it does, indeed, swim with its head?


Anyway, all interesting stuff from a very intersting person whose career was sadly cut short but a terrible boating accident that badly damaged his hands.

He designed a great bait aid called the Mydo which was a flat angled lead head to which was pinned a bait fish such as a sardine, mack or bluefish with the hooks lying the body of the baitfish - the planed angles on the lead head mimicked the swimming action of a live fish. They certainly worked well before every Tom Dick and Harry produced 'knock-offs' in their garages and made it difficult for him to continue further with his R&D as he had fewer funds to do so.




Any thoughts or counter arguments?




Ben

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Interesting. This explains how an eel manages to swim. I'd never thought about it but they seem to just wriggle through the water. Obviously there's no tail thrust so this theory could be right.

Ummm... makes you think, a fair achievment in my case

I think there is a mixture of "head swimming" and "tail swimming" in all fish.

If you take trout and salmon it can be seen that at slower speeds and when accelerating from a standstill they do indeed wag thier heads from side to side. Presumably this action produces the greatest amount of power at slow speed. But if you watch them swimming very fast the head doesn't move. You can see this when you spook a fish in shallow water, the initial swimming action is all bendy but once they get up to speed (in a matter of a few feet) they just use a very short but fast tail stroke.

The other place you can see this very clearly is when fish are running (not jumping) up weirs. These fish are moving forward through fast water (so in effect they are swimming as fast as they can) and their heads DO NOT move from side to side at all. All the propulsion comes from the very rapid short tail strokes. Only the tail and the rear third of the body moves from side to side. obviously in this situation moving the head and front of the body from side to side would increase the effective frontal area of the fish and make going forward harder.

The only tuna I've ever seen were in a tin so I don't know if they keep their heads still when going flat out

As an aside it is interesting to note that like fish all the fastest birds (falcons and swifts) have small, thin wings compared to the more ponderous birds (herons) yet nobody claims that birds fly with their heads


Andy

True, but in a fish's case, it's body is it's 'wing' and like a wing, the muscle is at the top of the wing - the fish's head!


Ben

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Google, how do fish swim! some goog stuff there.

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I did and some rather contradicting information there.

Some say they use their fins, others that they swim much like a snake by using rippling body movements!


Gives one much food for thought



Ben

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That is an excellent question, Ben;
here is one that I have been pondering for years.
How do animals walk?

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It also explains why sidestrain is so effective when playing a fish.

P

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Trout fishermen revere the trout; trout, on the other hand, unaware of their sublime standing in man's world, revere nothing, including man, a creature they seem to view with special contempt. Nihilism is a rare trait in fish but trout are full of it. The old men liked that.

The majority of fish swim by propagating a wave down the body which creates a forward thrust - just like a snake. A snake is anchored at the back enabling the wave to propagate and provide thrust by the friction between the tail and the ground. As the water does not have the same resistance as the ground the fish tail needs a larger surface area to provide the anchor.

The muscles which power the fish swimming are the myotomes - the mass of body muscle - have a look at
The Earth Life Web, Fish Muscles.

Fins are predominantly used to provide balance and as steerage thrusters. With some fish the fins have much more of a role in swimming - sea horses being the obvious examples.

Well that's what I was taught at college anyway!

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We come from dust; we return to dust. I'm going to fish

My first thoughts were of me as a kid trying to swim like the man from atlantis (can't remember the guys name though) he was part fish, is that wrong of me.

But an interesting read though