Have you heard the news about the seasick fish? Fish get seasick just like people do. Another story from Germany and, if you remember the one about the swan used as a club, it makes me think the Germans are hopelessly lacking in recreation. Dr. Reinhold Hilbig put 49 fish in an aquarium. Then he took them for a ride . . . in an airplane . . . and had the pilot, a fun seeker I’ll call Heineken . . . put the aircraft into a steep dive.

Astronauts do this to experience zero gravity-aka, zero g’s. NASA wants to see if they hurl their breakfast, lunch or dinner since dodging floating half-digested, freeze-dried weenies and beans could be a real drag in the Space Station.

Anyway, as zero g’s kicked in on the fish plane, 8 of the fish “lost their sense of balance,” according to Dr. Hilbig, and “looked as if they were about to vomit.” And now, you understand why I could not leave this story alone. First, which of the fish was the good doctor talking to? Was this the chief fish elected in a UN designated fair election, or some extremist purporting to represent all 49? And how did Dr. Hilbig know they were going to vomit? Did the other fish scamper to the far side of the aquarium screaming, “Fred’s gonna blow”? Did Dr. Hilbig and Heineken rig up hidden cameras catching the nauseated look of “I’m gonna hurl” on fish faces? How many fish has Dr. Hilbig seen vomit? The doctor’s answer to these questions is they were “spinning around, doing somersaults, and generally acting confused.” This describes most of the staff meetings we have at work, but I will bet a week’s pay, no one is seasick.

The 8 would-be hurling fish were killed. Examination found that most of them had asymmetrical inner ears. Most of them? Since their inner ears resemble ours and help fish stay upright Dr. Hilbig surmises that fish will react like people, or people will react like fish. Anyway, we will all react the same way regarding imbalanced, asymmetrical inner ear canals when we get on the water, in the water or experience motion sickness.

So, what I want to know is how does this translate into fish in the seas, or lakes, or streams and not in an aquarium? Do the tiny little Nemos stay nauseated all the time? And if so, wouldn’t natural selection mean they would feel too bad to have sex? I can tell you, that’s the last thing on my mind when I’m nauseated. And to conclude, wouldn’t their disinterest in sex render them unwilling to reproduce, thus meaning the sick little fish would be purged from the gene pool (pun completely intended) eliminating seasick fish, period?

Sixteen percent of Dr. Hilbig’s fish were seasick. Maybe that means the only time you can make a fish seasick is in outer space. And what that means, I don’t know.

Although this sounds like one of those things people would think up to do on a rainy day when they’re trapped at the lab and they have a friend, named Heineken, with a plane, I’d like to stress the doctor is not without compassion.

Concerning the experiment, he says only 10 percent of the fish had no fun, the other 90 percent had a splendid time. And furthermore, he always flies with the fish just to be fair. I’m sure the fish find that very comforting.

Cohea, a freelance writer, can be reached by e-mailing a37_tao@hotmail.com.