How does a fish live in salty ocean water without getting too salty inside? Chloride cells in its gills pump the extra salt out.
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Fish breathe with gills, the feathery red parts under the flaps on each side of a fish's head. Most of the gill is covered by thin, flat cells. Here and there among them are bigger, puffier cells called chloride cells. Scientists also call them ionocytes (say "eye-ON-o-sites").
They are named after chloride, one of the two parts that make up table salt. Each chloride cell is packed with mitochondria, the cell's energy makers. Moving salt takes a lot of energy!
A fish's body needs just the right amount of salt, not too much and not too little.
Scroll up to the 3D model and press Pump out salt. Watch salt travel from the blood, through the cell, and out into the water.
Salmon hatch in rivers, swim out to the salty ocean, and later come back to rivers. Their chloride cells change to work in both kinds of water!