The Measurement Of Gas Exchange In Blue Gouramis

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that enabled them to adapt to this problem. Since water contains an insufficient concentration of oxygen, fishes use gills to obtain the required amount of oxygen---via the counter-current exchange process. As water enters the mouth of a fish, it passes through slits in the pharynx, flows over the gills, and exits at the back of the operculum (gill cover) (Campbell 1997). This ventilation process serves to bring in a fresh supply of oxygen to the fish and removes carbon dioxide expelled at the gills (Campbell 1997). The water that flows across the gills flows in the opposite directions as compared to the direction of the blood flow in the capillaries. As blood flows through the capillaries located in the gills, the blood becomes more and more oxygenated, but at the same time it encounters water (flowing in the opposite direction) that is even more concentrated in oxygen (Campbell 1997). When the blood flow and water flow encounter each other in the gills, dissolved oxygen ...

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dissolved oxygen. Fishes can deal with these variations in oxygen concentrations by supplementing the gill and counter-current exchange processes with gulp trips. A gulp trip is when a fish swims to up the surface of the water to gulp in air so to obtain oxygen from air when the oxygen concentration in the water is too low. Some fishes have specialization in the stomach or pharynx, where gulped air becomes a source of oxygen (Barstow et al. 1999). The process of gulp trips are used by air breathing fish during times of low oxygen concentration in water to prevent fishes from reaching a critical oxygen tension that results in the death of the fish (Barstow et al. 1999). One such air ...

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