Displaying items by tag: tennessee aquarium

Tennessee Aquarium VP and Chief Conservation and Education Officer Dr. Anna George, right, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Conservation Delivery Coordinator Geoff Call collect critically endangered laurel dace from a stream ravaged by a prolonged drought on the Cumberland Plateau. The rescue successfully relocated 105 adults into human care at the Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institute’s headquarters near downtown Chattanooga.  Photos by Doug Strickland/Tennessee Aquarium

Drought prompts emergency rescue of one of America’s most endangered aquatic species

Casey Phillips is a writer for the Tennessee Aquarium.

CHATTANOOGA — Few things trigger louder or more distressing alarm bells among freshwater biologists than watching a waterway dry up during a severe, prolonged drought. That’s especially true when the disappearing stream is home to one of America’s most imperiled fish.

In late July, reports of dramatically withered streams atop Walden Ridge north of Chattanooga spurred an emergency rescue operation to prevent the extinction of the federally endangered laurel dace, which scientists consider to be among the 10 most at-risk fish in North America.

This effort was carried out by representatives from the Tennessee Aquarium, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the University of Georgia’s River Basin Center in coordination with the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency. In all, 105 adult laurel dace were removed from dangerously dry streams and successfully relocated to the Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institute (TNACI) near downtown Chattanooga.

All but one of the collected fish survived the relocation and are now thriving in temporary human care, where they will remain until conditions in their few native streams are sufficiently improved for them to be returned safely.

This laurel dace (Chrosomus saylori) was among dozens other collected from a stream on Walden Ridge north of Chattanooga to save the fish from drought. In the last 12 years, this minnow’s range has drastically dwindled to just two streams, and scientists consider it one of North America’s 10 most imperiled fish species.

A bumble bee (Bombus sp.) collects pollen from purpletop vervain (Verbena bonariensis) in a pollinator plot on the Tennessee Aquarium plaza in Chattanooga.  Tennessee Aquarium

Aquarium celebrates Pollinator Week with activities and giveaways June 17-23

Doug Strickland is a writer for the Tennessee Aquarium.

CHATTANOOGA — Pollinators. They’re kind of a big deal.

From iconic monarch butterflies and humble honey bees to fast-flying hummingbirds and acrobatic ... lemurs?! ... the animals that help plants reproduce are collectively known as “pollinators.” Whether intentional or accidental, the actions of pollen-transporting species contribute tremendously to the health of their respective ecosystems and are responsible for a shocking amount of the food we eat.

The benefits of the human-pollinator relationship are a two-way street. According to the Pollinator Partnership, a nonprofit dedicated to raising awareness about the role pollinators play, pollinators are responsible for roughly one of every three bites of food we eat and propagate over 180,000 different plant species — including more than 1,200 food crops.

This juvenile lake sturgeon was one of 50 released into the Tennessee River from Chattanooga’s Coolidge Park on May 2. The lineage of the fish can be traced millions of years, but overfishing, dams and habitat destruction has led to widespread population declines throughout its natural range.  Doug Strickland/Tennessee Aquarium

Lake sturgeon recovery links rivers and experts in Tennessee and Wisconsin 

Doug Strickland is a writer for the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga.

CHATTANOOGA — Just across from the iconic peaks of the Tennessee Aquarium on the shore of the Tennessee River, a group of scientists with the Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institute gathered on an early May morning to restore a primordial fish to the state’s primary waterway.

One by one, they carefully navigated down a boat ramp at Coolidge Park before gently releasing juvenile lake sturgeon, each just under a foot in length, into the river’s shallows.

These 50 sturgeon were the final youngsters to be reintroduced from a class of hundreds of sturgeon fry that arrived at the Conservation Institute’s freshwater field station last summer. Their introduction to the Tennessee River represented the latest milestone of a decades-long conservation effort to restore this state-endangered fish.

Despite reclaiming their one-time home in the waters of the Volunteer State, these newfound Tennesseans began life some 850 miles north of Chattanooga.

Gentoo penguin Carla selects a rock for her nest during “Rock Day,” which begins penguin nesting season at the Tennessee Aquarium.  Photo courtesy Tennessee Aquarium

Penguins swing into spring nesting season — with lots of rocks

Doug Strickland is a communications specialist at the Tennessee Aquarium.

CHATTANOOGA — While other birds’ hearts might flutter at the thought of building nests with supple twigs, fluffy fibers, mud or even their own saliva (yes, really), nothing gets the Tennessee Aquarium’s penguins quite as excited as rocks.

Big rocks. Little rocks. Smooth rocks. Rough rocks. Whatever type of rock a bird prefers, their arrival by the bucketful in the Penguins’ Rock gallery signals the official start of penguin nesting season and a flurry of activity that may — flippers crossed — lead to one or more tiny, fluffy chicks this summer. The birds typically begin nesting around April 1.

“These guys have been ready for a couple of weeks as the lights are gradually changing, and the days are getting a little bit longer, so they’ve known that this was coming,” says Assistant Curator Loribeth Lee.

Those steadily lengthening days, courtesy of the Aquarium’s team of systems operators, herald the arrival of spring and trigger biological signals telling the penguins that love is in the air. Nevertheless, it isn’t until the rocks are dumped into inviting piles& that the Gentoo and Macaroni Penguins can get to work building the nests that will help protect their young.

Polar bears on Wrangel Island, Russia. As the sea ice melts each summer, more than 1,000 bears come to Wrangel to wait for the return of the sea ice. It's the largest concentration of polar bears on Earth. BBC Studios via Tennessee Aquarium

Learn how the Arctic still thrives in the face of existential climate threats in new IMAX film

Doug Strickland is a writer for the Tennessee Aquarium.

CHATTANOOGA — At first glance, the Arctic seems an impossibly inhospitable place, a frigid wasteland of extremes in which nothing can survive.

Only one-quarter of this vast polar region at the top of the world is made up of land. The rest is comprised of a glacially cold ocean capped by vast stretches of ice. 

Despite its harsh conditions, life has found a way to endure — and even thrive — in the Arctic. Audiences will meet just a few of the Arctic’s charismatic residents on Jan. 11, 2024 when the Tennessee Aquarium IMAX 3D Theater debuts a new giant-screen film, Arctic 3D: Our Frozen Planet. 

Representatives from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institute work together to rescue Barrens Topminnows imperiled by an exceptional drought in Nov. 2016.  Tennessee Aquarium

Drought conditions threaten some of the nation’s most-endangered fish species

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

CHATTANOOGA — The endless parade of sunny, cloudless days in Chattanooga for the last two months may seem like the stuff of dreams to anyone planning an outdoor activity. However, this fall has turned into a blue-sky nightmare for aquatic species living in smaller creeks and streams.

“Some of those headwater pools are going to dry up, and we’ll lose large numbers of populations,” said Dr. Bernie Kuhajda, an aquatic conservation biologist at the Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institute. “It just doesn’t look good for our headwater fish communities out there. They’re really getting stressed.”

Less than half an inch (0.42 inches) of rain fell in Chattanooga during a 72-day span between Aug. 30 and Nov. 9, according to meteorological data recorded at Lovell Field. That’s just 0.16 inches more than fell in Death Valley, California, during the same period, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

As of the latest weekly report by the government’s U.S. Drought Monitor, most of Hamilton County is now considered to be experiencing a D4 or “exceptional” drought, the Monitor’s most severe drought category.

Bad news for endangered fish species like the Barrens Topminnow and Laurel Dace.

Conservation scientists with the Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institute pose in the Tennessee River before releasing more than 600 juvenile lake sturgeon into the waterway. Tennessee Aquarium

CHATTANOOGA — After bulking up all summer on a steady diet of bloodworms and brine shrimp, hundreds of juvenile lake sturgeon finally were returned to their ancestral waters this morning. 

Under a nearly cloudless autumn sky, biologists from the Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institute and third through fifth grade students from Girls Inc. of Chattanooga’s Fall Break Camp gathered on the north bank of the Tennessee River in Coolidge Park. 

One by one, they carefully made their way to the river’s edge holding clear, water-filled plastic buckets containing five-month-old lake sturgeon. Amidst excited squeals and nervous laughter, they squatted down, gently depositing each sleek, armor-skinned fish into the shallows.

This latest release “class” included 667 lake sturgeon. Comparatively tiny now, these miniature river giants have the potential to reach nine feet in length and could live for up to 150 years. 

Reintroduction events like this are the capstone payoff to a summer spent tirelessly caring for and — most of all — feeding these sturgeon, says Reintroduction Biologist II Teresa Israel. 

“It’s really special. It’s hard to see them go, but it’s a happy day since we’ve seen them get so big, so we know they’ll be successful out there,” she said. “It’s a great accomplishment that completes the circle for all our hard work.” 

Lake Sturgeon are considered endangered in Tennessee. As recently as the 1970s, this species had disappeared from both waterways due to the impacts of damming, poor water quality and over-fishing. Today’s release is the latest in the now-23-year-old effort to bring Lake Sturgeon back to the Tennessee River and Cumberland River.

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.” 

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.

An American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) paints art for the fall fundraising auction for the Tennessee Aquarium. The auction runs through Sept. 26.  Tennessee Aquarium

Wildlife masterpieces mark an artistic autumnal fundraiser for the Tennessee Aquarium

CHATTANOOGA — While getting ready to tackle his next artistic masterpiece at the Tennessee Aquarium, Avior the red-ruffed lemur likes to take a few steps to center himself: languid naps in the sunshine, delicate nibbles of romaine lettuce, a resounding howl to focus his energy. 

Only after these rituals are complete can this master of composition — a true “Lemur-nardo” da Vinci — begin putting paw and tail to canvas to create his next opus. 

Avior’s latest triumph — made using non-toxic, animal-friendly tempura paint, naturally — is a 16-by-20-inch piece created in collaboration with his fellow lemurs and social media star Atlanta-based artist Andrea Nelson (TikTok video). Avior and Nelson’s masterwork is one of more than two dozen pieces of art made by aquarium animals now up for bid during the Tennessee Aquarium’s online fall fundraising auction. The auction will conclude at noon on Monday, Sept. 26.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

The Tennessee Aquarium’s Gentoo penguin chick weighs more than 2 kilograms at 28 weeks old. Casey Phillips/Tennessee Aquarium 

Baby penguin, endangered turtles and puffer fish are the newest additions to the Tennessee Aquarium

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

As any parent knows, kids tend to do whatever you least expect. In the case of an endangered four-eyed turtle hatchling at the Tennessee Aquarium, however, merely existing was — in itself — a huge surprise. 

On July 11, a volunteer was tending an enclosure in a backup area of the River Journey exhibit. This habitat was only supposed to house a female endangered four-eyed turtle (Sacalia quadriocellata, a largely montaine species native to parts of China and Vietnam), but the volunteer soon discovered that the adult turtle wasn’t alone. Perched atop a layer of vegetation was a tiny hatchling that, by all accounts, shouldn’t have been there.

“The adult female hadn’t been with a male in over a year, so we did not check to see if she had laid this year,” says Bill Hughes, the aquarium’s herpetology coordinator. “To say the least, finding an egg, let alone a hatchling, was unexpected.”

Tennessee Aquarium Herpetology Coordinator Bill Hughes holds a recently hatched endangered four-eyed turtle.  Casey Phillips/Tennessee Aquarium

Juvenile brook trout swim into the water of their new home during a joint effort to return the species to its rightful range in the Tellico River watershed in the southeastern Cherokee National Forest. Photo courtesy Tennessee Aquarium.

In a virtuous cycle of life, native brookies return to Tellico River watershed in southeastern Cherokee National Forest.

(The writer produced this original piece for the Tennessee Aquarium).

Navigating through a thicket of branches while clambering across slick boulders in a rushing mountain stream is a difficult task in the best of times. Doing so while attempting to balance 40-pound buckets of water filled with imperiled fish takes the challenge to an entirely new level.

A team of scientists from the Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institute drove to one of the lush, high-elevation streams in the southern reaches of the Cherokee National Forest. During a brief lull between rainstorms, they were joined by Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency representatives and the U.S. Forest Service to celebrate a homecoming for 250 long-lost residents of this gorgeous landscape: juvenile Southern Appalachian brook trout.

Carefully navigating through a snarl of streamside vegetation, participants paused to release five or six trout at a time into pools with overhangs where the young fish could hide from predators and ambush floating insects that washed into the stream. The going was tough, but those involved in the effort to restock almost a kilometer of this pristine creek say the challenge was worth the reward of seeing Tennessee’s only native trout back in its ancestral waters.

“The days when we release fish, especially brook trout, are really special moments,” said Tennessee Aquarium Aquatic Conservation Biologist Dr. Bernie Kuhajda. “We’re with these fish all the way from when we first bring adults into the Conservation Institute to spawn, to watching the eggs start to develop, to the juveniles that are just a few inches long and ready to release here.

“It really is knowing that we get to help restore trout to the full circle of life. Days like today are the culmination of all that work to put trout back into the Southeastern streams where they belong.”

Like many Appalachian streams, this tributary of the North River in the Tellico River watershed hasn’t hosted the brook trout for almost a century. Clearcutting of forests in the early 1900s made waters in the region too warm. Combined with the introduction of brown and rainbow trout, “brookies” were effectively lost from more than 75 percent of the waterways where they once thrived.