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• Tennessee Aquarium brings more baby sturgeon into the world
  in News
  By Casey Phillips

  A young lake sturgeon is viewed through a photographic aquarium after arriving at the Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institute.  Tennessee Aquarium

  Tennessee Aquarium welcomes 2,500 baby lake sturgeon as restoration effort turns 25 years old

  Casey Phillips is a communications specialist at the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga.

  CHATTANOOGA — The approach of summer coincided with the arrival of thousands of juvenile lake sturgeon in the Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institute. 

  Biologists at the Aquarium’s freshwater field station welcomed 2,500, 2-inch babies into their care. After a steady diet of bloodworms and brine shrimp, bringing the fish to at least 6 inches, they will be reintroduced into the Tennessee River.

  These tiny fish hold tremendous promise. Adult lake sturgeon may reach lengths of 8 feet and live 150 years. 

  “They start out really small, so it’s shocking to think how big they can get,” says reintroduction biologist Sarah Kate Bailey. “The first year of life is when they grow the quickest. 

  “They grow so fast while we have them here. You’ll go home for the day, come in the next morning, and they look like they’ve grown overnight.” 

• Tennessee Aquarium wants to up the pollination game
  in News
  By Casey Phillips

  Pollinator Pathway signs on the Tennessee Aquarium Plaza in Chattanooga lead guests on a self-guided tour highlighting native plants, pollinator behaviors, and unusual pollinators. Courtesy Tennessee Aquarium

  TDOT joins with Tennessee Aquarium to pollinate our pathways

  CHATTANOOGA — With their distinctive orange and black patterns, gossamer wings and harrowing 3,000-mile migrations, few insects are as charismatic or beloved as the monarch butterfly. 

  Just imagine how tragic it would be if they disappeared.

  So it was with alarm in 2022 that the world received news that the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) had declared the monarch an endangered species, citing population numbers that had fallen 80 percent since the 1980s. 

  Similar anxiety met reports in the mid-2000s of colony collapse disorder. This sudden phenomenon dramatically imperiled the survival of European honey bees, whose activity directly or indirectly affects roughly one of every three bites of food we eat, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

  Pollinators are undoubtedly critically important to plants and humans alike, whether they’re investigating our Irises, calling on our Columbine, or buzzing our Blueberry bushes. This week, June 19-25, the world celebrates Pollinator Week, which recognizes the wondrous, vital contributions of butterflies, bees, moths, bats, and other pollinators.

• Southeast Tennessee ridges and rivers will benefit from $10m infusion of federal natural resource funding
  in News
  By Casey Phillips
  A crimper is attached to the back of a tractor on a farm in the Sequatchie River Valley. A relatively recent agricultural technique, crimping has been shown to reduce farmers’ input costs and improve soil quality. Recently, USDA approved funneling $10 million into a six-county region of Southeast Tennessee. This money will fuel conservation-minded improvements for landowners, including lowering the cost to rent equipment like crimpers and subsidize the planting of cover crops to improve soil health and reduce sedimentation in nearby streams.  Tennessee Aquarium

   

  Targeted collaborative conservation will help local agricultural operations improve soil and water quality and protect aquatic life

  CHATTANOOGA — Tennessee is as much a patchwork quilt of farms as it is an intricately woven lacework of streams and rivers. Soon, farmers and the aquatic life living alongside them will reap the benefits of $10 million in federal funds to support water-friendly agricultural improvements in the rolling uplands of the state’s southeastern corner.

  The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) approved the allocation of more than $197 million to support Regional Conservation Partnership Programs (RCPP) throughout the nation. These initiatives promote coordination between USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and partnering organizations that are already engaged in conservation efforts.

• Nursing vanishing sharks far from the sea
  in News
  By Doug Strickland
  Tennessee Aquarium

   

  Tennessee Aquarium hatches endangered shark species

  CHATTANOOGA — The Tennessee Aquarium reached a significant milestone just in time for Shark Week with the recent hatching of three critically endangered short-tail nurse shark pups. 

  The diminutive youngsters, which hatched July 7, are the product of three adult short-tail nurse sharks — one male and two females — which arrived at the aquarium along with eight juveniles and eight fertilized eggs from a facility in Canada last year.

• Tennessee Aquarium marks a milestone in its effort to bring native brook trout back to mountain streams
  in News
  By Casey Phillips

  Reintroduction Assistant Kaylee Clayton, left, Jim Hill Fellow for Conservation Anthony Hernandez, center, and Reintroduction Biologist Teresa Israel cross a stream during a Southern Appalachian brook trout release. Tennessee Aquarium

  Emblematic brook trout get a second chance at home in Southern Appalachian streams

  Casey Phillips is a writer for the Tennessee Aquarium.

  CHATTANOOGA — A team from the Tennessee Aquarium, Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency and Trout Unlimited hiked along — and occasionally waded through — a pristine tributary of South Fork Citico Creek in Cherokee National Forest. 

   Navigating an obstacle course of tangled mountain laurel branches and moss-slickened boulders in late May, the team followed the stream as it gently descended through the Appalachian uplands. When a calm pool or shaded rocky overhang presented itself, they paused to dip their nets into five-gallon buckets filled with wriggling juvenile Southern Appalachian brook trout.

  These little fish, raised to about two inches over six months, were the focus of more than six months of work at the Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institute and the impetus for the hours-long trek into the East Tennessee woods.

• Dinosaurs released in Chattanooga to honor Earth Day 2022
  in News
  By Ray Zimmerman

  Tennessee Aquarium Director of Hospitality and Marketing Meredith Roberts and her daughter Lucy release a juvenile lake sturgeon during an Earth Day event on the Chattanooga riverfront.  Tennessee Aquarium

  Tennessee Aquarium releases endangered sturgeon on a fin and a prayer

  CHATTANOOGA — Lake sturgeon are living fossils.

  They are dinosaur fish. They have no scales. They are protected by a tough skin with boney plates, and are unchanged for millennia. They are part of a widespread related group of fish, with 23 species worldwide, and are an endangered species in Tennessee.

  Tennessee Aquarium staff released some of these dinosaurs into the Tennessee River here on Earth Day, observed this year on April 22. Aquarium staff were joined by 30 students from Calvin Donaldson Elementary School and the public to release 65 juvenile lake sturgeon into the Tennessee River at Chattanooga’s Coolidge Park.

• Like a message in a bottle, washed-up plastic signals a growing threat to global health
  in News
  By Ray Zimmerman

  A sea lion sculpture from the Washed Ashore art exhibit that will open this weekend at the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga.  Tennessee Aquarium/Washed Ashore

  Poignant plastic-waste art exhibit washes ashore at Tennessee Aquarium  

  CHATTANOOGA — Visitors to the Tennessee Aquarium will see a dire warning in the guise of colorful art crafted from plastic debris at a unique exhibit beginning April 16.

  Washed Ashore is an Oregon-based nonprofit organization dedicated to repurposing plastic waste through artists and sparking conservation conversations. The Tennessee Aquarium will host an exhibit of its sculptures and collages.

  Those who walk ocean and lake beaches see the accumulated debris. Some may try to ignore it. Others may abandon their favorite places for recreation and relaxation because they can no longer bear the unsightly wreckage. Plastics impact every living creature.

• Baby whale! Cruise with a humpback and her calf at Tennessee Aquarium 3D movie
  in Feedbag
  By Thomas Fraser

  Sylvia Earle  Courtesy Catarina Fazenda

  The Tennessee Aquarium IMAX Theater in Chattanooga premiered its new 3D educational movie Ocean Odyssey on March 4.

  Author,  oceanographer and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Sylvia Earle visited the aquarium to help launch the movie, which she and Rupert Degas narrate.

  The movie follows a humpback whale mother and calf as they navigate the East Australian Current from the Great Barrier Reef to Antarctica. The planet’s oceans are home to the most diverse and abundant array of life on earth, but they are threatened by climate change, pollution and acidification. Still, life lives on.

  The Tennessee Aquarium encourages filmgoers to enhance the 3D film experience with a visit to the Secret Reef exhibit in their Ocean Journey building. This exhibit replicates the Flower Garden Banks off the coast of Texas and Louisiana. 

  In 1990, Dr. Sylvia Earle became the first woman appointed chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.  

  She left that agency to work in the private sector to promote healthy oceans and public access to ocean environments, including Mission Blue.

• Even the movement of butterflies is affected by supply-chain issues
  in News
  By Casey Phillips

  A postman butterfly feeds on a bloom in the Tennessee Aquarium’s Butterfly Garden in Chattanooga. At any one time, the garden may host 1,000 to 1,500 butterflies representing more than 200 species. Courtesy Tennessee Aquarium

  Butterflies are back at the Tennessee Aquarium after pandemic bottleneck

  Some of the Tennessee Aquarium’s most entrancing, cherished residents — and there are literally thousands of them — have been absent for more than a year and a half.

  The aquarium has been unable to source butterflies to fill the Ocean Journey building’s Butterfly Garden since early 2020 because of supply chain disruptions.

  The butterflies typically originate from Costa Rica. Every week, about 500 butterfly chrysalises — the life stage between caterpillars and full-fledged adults — are delivered to the aquarium. By raising specific plants, Costa Rican farmers can attract butterflies that use the plants as egg-laying sites and feeding sources for their offspring. By collecting and shipping chrysalises to facilities like the aquarium, farmers can earn a reliable income without resorting to destructive agricultural practices that threaten their country’s rainforests.

  And just in time for the holidays, the Tennessee Aquarium’s Butterfly Garden will reopen to the public Nov. 5. This warm, light-filled gallery in Chattanooga is once again filled with these jewel-like insects, which flutter in the air by the hundreds.

  “They have so many bright colors and intricate patterns that they’re kind of like living works of art,” said entomologist II Rose Segbers. “The butterfly garden is special because it’s completely immersive. There really aren’t any barriers between guests and the butterflies or the habitat.

  “You can see everything just like you would in nature, and a butterfly might even land on you.”

  Walking through the garden is like being whisked into the steamy, lush wilds of a Costa Rican rainforest. The interior of the gallery is always kept warm and humid — a welcome escape from the cooler, dreary days of autumn — and seemingly every leaf, blossom and branch serves as temporary resting spot for butterflies of every description.

  At any one time, the garden houses as many as 1,500 butterflies. These can come from any of more than two dozen species, from cerulean-winged blue morphos to enormous tawny owls with their tell-tale eyespots. 

  “You get a lot of variety in here,” Segbers said. “If you come here one week, you’ll see a certain variety of butterflies, but if you come back a week later, you might see completely different ones. It gives people a good excuse to keep coming back.”

  The cocoon-like chrysalises can be viewed hanging from racks through a special viewing window in the garden. Their shells often look drastically different from the butterflies within. Who would suspect that the familiar orange, black and white monarch butterfly would come from a gold-fringed, jade chrysalis or that leaf-like pink or green chrysalises are host to brilliant yellow cloudless sulfurs?

  Entomologist Rose Segbers pins blue morpho butterfly pupae to a hanging tray, where they will hang until they emerge in a few weeks time. Courtesy Tennessee Aquarium

• Tennessee Aquarium floats citizen-scientist app to extend the reach of public research
  in Water
  By Ray Zimmerman

  A black crappie is seen in the Tennessee Aquarium. Citizen scientists across the region can now plug their fish findings into a new database. Courtesy Tennessee Aquarium

  So you want to be a citizen scientist? There’s a new app for that!

  The Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institute wants to assess the status of various fish populations throughout the Southeast so it released a new app to help outdoor folks and anglers identify the fish they spot, report the sighting, and enter their discoveries into a regional fish database.

  The Freshwater Information Network (FIN) accepts and includes data for three major watersheds: The Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, and Mobile Bay.

  Tennesseans may be familiar with the two rivers, but may think of Mobile Bay as a distant place with no connection to them, but its headwaters touch Tennessee in the Conasauga River. With its geographic isolation, the Conasauga is home to species of fish found nowhere else in the world.