Cutthroat trout are getting a lift up to Colorado's remote mountain lakes. We are stocking around 240 lakes by airplane in the southern half of Colorado's high country.
Velocity of airplane + altitude of airplane + temperature change + depth of water + mass of the fish + air density, etc., etc., makes fish survival of 90% very hard to believe. Whether the fish are tiny fry or weigh 50 pounds, everything falls at the same rate of speed (10 meters per second squared). With the downward pull of gravity, and the forward velocity of the airplane, those little trout are going to hit the water hard. The combination of the various forces and the other events I've described (or left out) is going to add up to a fatal shock to their little systems. This is my opinion, of course, but I'm trying to use the laws of physics to support my conclusion. You just can't break the laws of physics and expect survival of a little life form dumped out of an airplane.
