Has anyone ever experimented with taking live minnows/shiners, putting them in a water bath that has had 100% oxygen bubbled into it for a while to saturate the water, then slowly freeze the water and minnows and bubbles into a solid block of ice? Would they survive when thawed?
I've never done that but will relate a couple of stories, one second hand the other a direct observation that may interest you.
My brother-in-law once kept gold fish over a period of 10 years or so in a plastic barrel used as a water trough. In a prolonged cold spell the water would freeze being as it was exposed over much of the surface of the container to the elements. In northern OK a prolonged spell would be say a week or a bit longer of sub-freezing temperatures. He claimed the water would freeze around the gold fish which he did not observe to move. His hypothesis was that if they were in open water under ice, they would be moving around. He didn't observe them to move and if one were accept the hypothesis one might agree that he observed them encased within ice. The gold fish survived the cold spells but I will let each decide if they were frozen.
In Junior High, we had a science show come to present in our auditorium. The presenter was demonstrating liquid nitro. He took a rose and shattered it and then he froze a live goldfish stiff as a board and dropped back into its bowl where it promptly sank to bottom motionless. He continued his presentation but after a while the goldfish was swimming about. He explained the goldfish by saying that he had frozen it externally but that inside it wasn't frozen. Thawing, allowed it move again but that the external freezing was not lethal.
Some things have be proven to withstand freezing being adapted for it. Two that come to mind are a cricket in New Zealand and the wood frop of the northern boreal forests of North America.
It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so - Will Rogers
