So I was thinking, what if we were to genetically engineer a dolphin to be the size of a whale, but instead of being solid dolphin meat inside, it's mostly filled with air? It wouldn't be lighter than air. It would weigh about as much as ten dolphins, but it's displacing a whale's volume of air, so its overall density would be very low. That density would make it really floaty, like how an air-filled balloon is far more floaty than an uninflated balloon. If it had appropriately-sized muscles and energy reserves, it could possibly swim in the air even while carrying a person on its back... I am probably missing some really important problems with life-sustaining requirements, but you know, it's fun.
I have to ask, why a dolphin and not just an air filled whale? Though, if we're going with sea creatures, I would definitely choose jellyfish or perhaps octopus. Octopuses are basically already balloons with how expandy and collapsy they are
I was thinking to use either a mammal or a bird since their skin is typically air-tight. Airborne jellies are fun, but they wouldn't hold their shape in the air of they're made of the same stuff real jellies are made of. An inflated octopus might work, though. It worked for Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Whales are naturally the heaviest creatures on earth, so physics liberties are required to get it anywhere near buoyant in air. I know artists like to scale whales up to colossal proportions that would lower their density to close to the density of air, such as Wailord. This whale here is the size of a regular whale, so it would only be able to swim through the air if it weighs about 300 pounds.
A hollow whale or sea lion without the body fat seems wrong to me. It makes more sense to basically inflate a dolphin to that size, scaling up its skin, muscles, and connective tissue while leaving the remaining space filled with air. Therefore, you have a whale-sized dolphin that only weighs as much as a few dolphins stitched together. That dolphin would be fairly floaty and might be able to swim. Theoretically.
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