Maybe someone will correct me here, but I think they can do this because of 3 things working together...

1) they can slow their metabolism by 99+% when water temps are near freezing

2) the specific heat of water allows for relatively stable temperatures throughout this period (meaning their bodies don't have to react to change)

3) they have dense vascular areas near certain surface of parts of their body (like the rear end) that can actually leverage dissolved oxygen in the water as a source as water passes over the surface of the skin/vein walls

Since they require so very little oxygen to support their extremely depreciated metabolic state, this is enough to keep them alive until things get better... so to speak...

Am I off base here?

Pretty fascinating stuff!

96.85840735 percent clayton... the rest is just pi.

We become what we think about.