It's no fish story: researchers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory really are making fake fish.
"In a nutshell, we're trying to mimic nature," University of Tennessee graduate student Ryan Saylor said. For him, this is a bit of 'white whale' project.
"I love fish, I study fish, I'm just a fish biologist in an engineer's clothes right now," he said.
You'd be forgiven for falling hook, line and sinker for these realistic fakes. However the goal is not to fool anglers, but stop their catch from becoming chum.
"I want to save the fish that we know pass through these turbines," Saylor said.
East Tennessee's dams are the focus, their turbines slice scales and gut gills.
Sensors inside the models evaluate dam designs fish could safely swim through.
"We can learn how to minimize the injury and damage from those stressors and lead to better designs in fish turbines that are more 'fish friendly'" Saylor said.
Technically speaking, these are anthropomorphic test devices painstakingly laser scanned, 3D printed and cast (no pun intended ) using ballistic gel.
"We are attempting to mimic something that is incredibly difficult. It is a complex mixture of muscles, skeleton, skin and scales."
So far, researchers have successfully case models for blue gill, rainbow trout, shad, bass and eel. The next stage of the project involves seeing how the fake fish fare going through model turbines.