2.15 Fish body kinematics change in response to environmental hydrodynamic stimuli
The vast majority of research on fish locomotion has
taken place in relatively low turbulence environments,
either with fish in still water tanks or in recirculating
flumes. But many fish swim naturally in flowing waters
of high turbulence. Liao et al.[86,99,100] studied fishes
swimming in the Karman vortex wake behind cylinders placed in flowing water and demonstrated that trout
can greatly alter their locomotor kinematic pattern to
tune the pattern of body bending to the wavelength between oncoming vortices. Remarkably, fish swimming
in a Karman street can completely shut off body muscle
activity and generate thrust passively by adjusting the
angle of their body airfoil in the vortex street to generate thrust as vortices pass by.