SUMMARY

The remora fish is capable of rapid, reversible, and robust attachment to a wide variety of marine hosts both natural and artificial with widely varying geometric and material properties. Despite its unique abilities, the mechanisms responsible for remora attachment have received little attention in scientific literature in comparison to the number of works commenting on it. The objective of this work is to identify and quantify the behavior and limitations of the critical mechanisms responsible for remora attachment. Traditional dissection techniques will be combined with high resolution three dimensional scans to characterize and identify critical structural metrics pertaining to remora morphology. The structural metrics will be incorporated into finite element model simulations to predict remora behavior during attachment. Finally, experimental methods will be performed on live, euthanized or artificial tissues to validate model predictions when necessary. The work is expected to be of value to both the engineering and biological communities through the creation of design tools, analysis, data sets, and simulations that will provide both quantitative design data for future bioinspired devices and/or methodologies, but also insight into the behavior of the remora itself.