Navigating Turbulent Environments: Insights from Fish Schools

Fish schools have long been studied as a model for understanding the hydrodynamic benefits of group locomotion. However, little is known about how the school works together to navigate through turbulent environments. We hypothesize that schooling serves as a mechanism that fish use to not only filter out noisy hydrodynamic signals, but also enhance the coherent signals that are more readily detectable by their lateral line. To test this hypothesis, experiments were conducted in our new FATE (Fish Aquarium with a Turbulent Environment) facility at Johns Hopkins University. Using a unique jet array system, turbulence was controlled independently from the mean flow. Schools of Giant Danios (Devario Aequipinnatus) were exposed to flows that have the same mean velocity but with increasing energy dissipation rates. For each case, the transient behavior of the schools was recorded and statistics regarding their size and shape will be presented. This ongoing work aims to uncover the underlying principles that fish schools utilize to navigate through complex, noisy environments.