  We investigate the gravitational settling of a long, model elastic filament
in homogeneous isotropic turbulence. We show that the flow produces a strongly
fluctuating settling velocity, whose mean is moderately enhanced over the
still-fluid terminal velocity, and whose variance has a power-law dependence on
the filament's weight but is surprisingly unaffected by its elasticity. In
contrast, the tumbling of the filament is shown to be closely coupled to its
stretching, and manifests as a Poisson process with a tumbling time that
increases with the elastic relaxation time of the filament.

Fluid Dynamics;Soft Condensed Matter;Chaotic Dynamics