A recent study shows how a fish stays alive for up to two months on land. It's all in there skin. Mangrove Killifish are fish that are very small, about 1-2 inches. They live in pools in mangrove forests in central America, south America, and Florida. During dry seasons when their pools disappear, the fish hole up in leaf litter or hollow logs. As long as they stay moist, they can survive for extended periods of time out of water by breathing air through their skin. The fish also need something else to survive. Professor Patricia Wright, from the University of Guelph, Ontario has studied these fish for a few years now and concludes that " All cells in the body need the right combination of ions and water for an animal to stay alive," and she said that "Normally, the gills are responsible for these processes in fish. We knew that in mangrove Killifish the gills are likely useless on land, so how these fish maintain ion balance out of water was a mystery,"
http://www.biologynews.net/archives/2010/11/08/special_skin_keeps_fish_species_alive_on_land.html
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