They're still soggy for a while, like my shoes are from walking out in the rain today for a while (across Baylor's campus and back)--those shoes are still soggy and icky-feeling after sitting through Monty Python's Meaning of Life and a few hours afterwards. Hours. I think this theory of soggy is what the movie is working with here. Plus, they do dry out in the heat lamp (oh, how cruel!).

[Sidenote: what SBSP did to sponge/shell/sea-related novelty items is like what Chicken Run did for meat pies--oh, the horrors! Never! I'll always think of poor dying Sponge and Pat in the heat lamp! "I don't want to be a touristy knick-knack!"]

Also, it's a movie. Few movies are ever scientifically/physically correct anymore, especially certain animated features with a talking sponge. That's why the other fish in Shell City who've been dead for a while come back alive. Real dead fish don't magically come back alive by getting wet, but it made for a nice live action/animation mixed sequence and some great humor involving Elmer's and google eyes.

I agree with what he said, they were still wet from the water, like they didn't dry out until they were under the lamp.

I hope kids won't start squirting their dead novelty figures hoping they'll come back the way they flushed fish down tolilets trying to free them after seeing Finding Nemo.