Title is self explanatory. Do freshwater fish ever accidentally find themselves in brackish or saltwater? How do they deal with that?
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The vast majority wouldn’t, simply because lots of river fish live far up rivers away from the entry point to the oceans. Storm surges could push fish down rivers and into oceans, but it depends again on the distance and location of the flood. If you’re far enough up, it’s more likely a river fish in a flood ends up in a lake, or deposited in a flooded field where it dies once the water recedes.
At any rate, most river fish wouldn’t want to wind up in the ocean, as they normally live in freshwater, and saltwater will slowly kill them. There are examples of fish moving between the two though at different stages of life, and there are also fish who live in estuaries where the rivers meet the oceans, and they can handle a bit of both (it’s usually more salt than fresh at that point though, especially in large wide tidal estuaries).
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