Thermoregulation in Fish

a. The mechanism of thermoregulation in fish

Active fishes can produce substantial amounts of metabolic heat, but they have
difficulty retaining any of that heat. Blood pumped from the heart goes directly to the
gills, where it comes very close to the surrounding water to exchange respiratory gases.
So any heat that the blood picks up from metabolically active muscles is lost to the
surrounding water as it flows through the gills. It is thus surprising that some large,
rapidly swimming fishes, such as bluefin tuna and great white sharks, can maintain
temperature differences as great as 10 to 15C between their bodies and the surrounding
water. The heat comes from their powerful swimming muscles, and the ability of these
hot fishes to conserve that heat is based on the remarkable arrangements of their blood
vessels (Sadava, 2011:843).
In the usual (cold) fish circulatory system, oxygenated blood from the gills collects
in a large dorsal vessel, the aorta, which travels through the center of the fish,
distributing blood to all organs and muscles. Hot fishes have a smaller central dorsal
aorta, and most of their oxygenated blood is transported in large vessels just under the
skin. The cold blood from the gills is thus kept close to the surface of the fish. Smaller
vessels transporting this cold blood into the muscle mass run parallel to vessels
transporting warm blood from the muscle mass back toward the heart. Since the vessels
carrying the cold blood into the muscle are in close contact with the vessels carrying
warm blood away, heat flows from the warm to the cold blood by conduction and is
therefore retained in the muscle mass (Sadava, 2011:843).
Because heat is exchanged between blood vessels carrying blood in opposite
directions, this adaptation is called a countercurrent heat exchanger. It keeps the heat
within the muscle mass, enabling these fishes to have an internal body temperature
considerably higher than the water temperature. Why is it advantageous for the fish to be
warm? Each 10C rise in muscle temperature increases the fishs sustainable power
output almost threefold, giving it a faster foraging capability (Sadava, 2011:843).




b. The fish response to temperature changes
Behavioral thermoregulation occurs when a fish actively seeks out areas of water with
higher or lower temperature. For instance juveniles of the Bear Lake Sculpin (Cottus
extensus) live at the bottom of lakes feeding on the lake floor during the day. Here the
temperature is normally around 5C, however after dark they stop feeding and rise to he
surface where they hang around digesting their food. The temperature near the surface of
the lake is about 14C. By doing this they are able to digest much more food during the
night than they could have done by staying on the lake bottom and so they can grow
more quickly. The difference is considerable, at 5C it would take them 33 hours, or a
day and a half to digest the food they can eat in one day, but at 14C it takes them only
4.5 hours to digest the same amount of food, so by coming to the surface at night they are
making much more efficient use of their time. And then by returning to the colder water
as soon as its food is digested it slows down its metabolism again and thus conserves
energy (Ramel, 2014[Online]).
Physiological thermoregulation is where the fish controls its core body temperature by
means of internal physiological and metabolic activities. This is also how we maintain
our body temperatures, but while it is universal among mammals it is rare in fish. It
occurs in only a few species, all of which are marine and swim constantly. These include
various Tuna, some Mackerels, the Mackerel Sharks (Lamna nasus and L. ditropis) and
the Great White Shark (Carcharodon carcharias) (Ramel, 2014[Online]).
Both sharks and bony fish that maintain an increased body temperature do so by
means of a counter-current exchange system whereby blood vessels carrying blood that
is hot as a result of muscular activity pass along side, and give up some of their heat to,
blood that is going to parts of the body the animal wishes to keep warm. The organ
where the heat exchange takes place is called retia mirabilia. A fish may have more than
one retia mirabilia, Mackeral Sharks for instance have three, one in the swimming
muscles, one in the body cavity near the guts and one around the brain (Ramel,
2014[Online]).

c. The damage due to temperature changes in fish
Some species of fishes are as active at 5C as others are at 30C. Fishes in shallow
tropical waters live at temperatures near 40C , whereas those in dense, highly saline,
polar waters live at temperatures between -1.0 and -2.0C, which is bellow the freezing
point of the body fluids of most vertebrates. Some of these cold-water fishes apparently
live in a permanently supercooled state; others prevent freezing by addition of antifreeze
to their body fluids. Because of the low temperatures the amount of oxygen dissolved in
the water is often very great, and some antartic fishes of the family Chaenichthyidae can
satisfy the oxygen requirements of their tissues even though they possess no respiratory
pigments whatsoever (Gordon, 1982: 343).
Although some fishes live in hot spring, they usually do so by exploiting local
variations in temperature and remaining in the cooler parts of the springs. There are no
convincing data on fishes remaining permanently in water more than 1 or 2 degrees
above 40C (Gordon, 1982: 344).
High temperature does not always result in lethal but can cause long-term health
status. For example, stress is marked body is weak, emaciated, and abnormal behavior,
while low temperatures lead to the fish become susceptible to fungal infections and
bacterial pathogens due to weakening of the immune system. Basically low temperature
allows water containing oxygen higher up, but the low temperatures cause respiratory
stress in fish respiration rate and a decrease in heart rate so that it can continue to swoon
fish due to lack of oxygen (Tunas, 2005).
References

Gordon, Malcolm S., 1982. Animal Physiology Principles and Adaptations, Fourth Edition.
New York : Collier Macmillan Canada, Inc.
Ramel, Gordon. Are Fish Cold Blooded?: Thermoregulation in Fish. http://www.earthlife.
net/fish/tregulate.html. [ Access on 30 August 2014 ].
Sadava, David., Hillis, David M., et al. 2011. LIFE:The Science of Biology, Ninth Edition.
U.S.A : Sinauer Associates, Inc.
Tunas, Arthama Wayan. 2005. Patologi Ikan Toloestei. Yogjakarta: Universitas Gadjah
Mada.