• Question: Does lightning strike the sea and if it does why don't all the fish die?

    Asked by 438bsmf38 to Ellen, Elliot, Hazel, Rupesh, Thomas on 16 Jun 2016. This question was also asked by 698bsmf22.
    • Photo: Hazel Garvie-Cook

      Hazel Garvie-Cook answered on 16 Jun 2016:

      Good question!
      Yep lightning can strike the sea. When lightning hits the sea, most of the electricity from the lightning travels along the surface of the sea instead of down into the depths. Some fish can die after lightning strikes – it depends how deep they’re swimming. The electricity from the lightning strike gets less the further you are from where it struck too. So fish swimming close to the surface of the sea, but quite far away from the lightning strike, might be ok.

    • Photo: Elliot Jokl

      Elliot Jokl answered on 16 Jun 2016:

      I just think another thing to add is that the sea is very, very big! So even if part of is hit by lightning, it will only effect a very, very small percentage of the whole sea. As Hazel said, the electricity spreads out quite quickly and so it has much less “ooomph” (or, current, to be more scientific) even just a short distance away from where the lightning hits.

    • Photo: Thomas Biggans

      Thomas Biggans answered on 18 Jun 2016:

      Yes lightning can strike the sea but it is less likely than lightning striking the ground.

      When lightning strikes the sea the electricity flows along the surface of the water. That’s because water is not a very good conductor of electricity which means electricity doesn’t find it easy to flow through water. Imagine your trying to walk across a field but the field is really muddy so your feet get stuck in the mud and you have to try harder to move. Its the same idea where you are electricity and the water is the muddy field. So the water takes energy from the electricity until there’s no energy left. However there are lots of other things in the sea apart from water and a few of them tend to float on the surface so the electricity can travel easier on the surface using these things.

      Now because the electricity travels along the surface it never reaches the fishes who are underwater so they don’t die however it would hurt them if they happened to be on the surface at the time of the lightning strike.

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