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Fluid dynamic properties of shark caudal fin morphology and its relationship to habitats

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Abstract

Locomotion is essential for the survival of fish because it influences the success rate of avoiding danger and predation. In particular, differences in the hydrodynamic properties of the caudal fin have a significant impact on swimming, since the caudal fin is the primary propulsion organ. The hydrodynamic characteristics of shark caudal fins have been studied. However, comparisons have been limited to a few species, and more caudal fin morphologies need to be investigated to determine the relationship between caudal fin morphology and hydrodynamic characteristics in sharks with diverse morphologies. Therefore, we performed computational fluid dynamics analysis on the caudal fin morphologies of 30 species in 9 orders of sharks to investigate the relationship between caudal fin morphology and hydrodynamic characteristics. We found that caudal fin morphologies with large ARL (ratio of vertical to the horizontal length of caudal fin) had higher thrust and swimming costs and caudal fin morphologies with small ARS (ratio of the product of the length and height of the caudal fin to the surface area) had higher propulsive efficiency. The results of this study will help in selecting caudal fin morphology for fish-like underwater robots and in studying the relationship between shark ecology and caudal fin morphology.

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  • 24 November 2023

    The original online version of this article was revised: Videos of ESM are updated.

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Acknowledgments

Part of the analysis in this study was performed using supercomputing resources at the Cyberscience Center of Tohoku University. This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP23KJ0081.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Hiroaki Sumikawa

    Present address: Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Division of Science and Engineering, Iwate University, 4-3-5 Ueda, Morioka, Iwate, 020-8551, Japan

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Division of Science and Engineering, Iwate University, 4-3-5 Ueda, Morioka, Iwate, 020-8551, Japan

    Yoshikazu Naraoka, Yunosuke Obayashi & Tasuku Miyoshi

  2. Research Fellow of Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, 5-3-1 Kouzimati, Tiyodaku, Tokyo, 102-0083, Japan

    Hiroaki Sumikawa

  3. Mechanical Engineering, Division of Engineering, Kanazawa Institute of Technology, 3-1 Yatsukaho, Hakusan, Ishikawa, 924-0838, Japan

    Takashi Fukue

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  1. Hiroaki Sumikawa
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  4. Takashi Fukue
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Correspondence to Hiroaki Sumikawa.

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Ethics approval

This study did not use actual fish and was conducted while observing the Guidelines for the use of fish in research published by the Ichthyological Society of Japan in 2003.

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Supplementary Information

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

ESM Movie S1 Motion of analytical model A viewed from above at 0.5x speed (MP4 475 KB)

ESM Movie S2 Motion of analytical model A viewed from behind at 0.5x speed (MP4 180 KB)

Supplementary file3 (DOCX 3528 KB)

Supplementary file4 (XLSX 15 KB)

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Sumikawa, H., Naraoka, Y., Obayashi, Y. et al. Fluid dynamic properties of shark caudal fin morphology and its relationship to habitats. Ichthyol Res 71, 294–304 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10228-023-00933-1

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