So, when lightning hits the water, the current zips across the surface in all directions. And if you’re swimming anywhere in the vicinity, it’ll probably hit you. But below the surface, most of the electricity is instantly neutralized. So the fish are generally spared.
The favorite answer is before a lightning strike, a charge builds up along the water’s surface. When lightning strikes, most of electrical discharge occurs near the water’s surface. Most fish swim below the surface and are unaffected.
Another frequent question is “Do fish die when lightning strikes water?”.
We discovered so there you have it, no, the fish generally don’t die en mass when lightning strikes. Lightning striking the ocean is quickly dissipated across the surface, but if you happen to be swimming about with a nice big steel conductor tied to your back like a scuba diver, you could well up your odds of being hit and in for a rough day.
Apparently not, unlike air, the sea is a very good conductor as it contains salt. Rather than creating an direct narrow, path concentrating the “punch”, the charge from the lightning strike spreads out sideways and downwards in an expanding half sphere from the surface.
Do fish bite during a lightning storm?
Once the main body of the storm hits and moves through the area, rain, winds and sometimes thunder and lightning form along the frontal line. The pressure continues to drop until it bottoms out as the storm runs its course. The fishing should be good this entire time, although lightning and heavy rains on the water’s surface might spook fish.
Although, some areas especially around the east coast of Southern Africa and South America do see relatively regular lightning strikes at sea. So in short, no, we don’t see mass die off of fish everytime there is a storm.
He took the average strikes across the worlds oceans, compared it the surface area of the oceans, the number of whales estimated in the ocean, the time the are at the surface etc and to cut a long story short, he reckons, yes, statistically whales must have been killed by lightning many times in the past few thousand years.
Do fish float when they dead?
Well, most fish will eventually float when dead, but they will first sink as their bodies are heavier than water. The remains will only start rising once the body has decomposed enough and become buoyant.
Swim bladder disease is also known as Swim Bladder Disorder or Flip-over and most commonly affects betta fish and fancy goldfish. Fish with Swim Bladder Disease often float upside down, struggle to remain at the water surface, or sink to the bottom of their tank once they stop swimming.