Appalachia is an ancient place. That's a fact. Whether your roots in this part of the world run deep, you just moved here or you're merely passing through, the feeling of age in this rippled, time-worn landscape is palpable, especially when you find yourself traipsing off the trail.
The animals that dwell in the deep lakes and far-flung hollers betwixt Appalachia's mountains have birthed many tall tales and legends. And as it turns out, some of them might even have a kernel of truth to them.
In this special episode of the show, we swap tales and shine a light of scientific truth on our old home place. A team of the Aquarium's in-house experts bring their experience to the task of debunking — or possibly lending credence to — common Appalachian animal myths, from rumors of mountain lions haunting the hills to literal big fish stories of giant catfish lurking at the bottom of rivers.
Episode cast
[Disclaimer: The song used in the introduction to this episode was created through the generative audio platform Suno.]
The Podcast Aquatic is made possible by support from The Tennessee Conservationist, the official magazine of Tennessee State Parks.
Printed sustainably on 100% post-consumer recycled paper with UV ink, each issue is filled with fascinating stories about Tennessee’s native species, rich history, and unique culture.
It’s also your guide to exploring state parks and planning your next outdoor adventure.
Become a Tennessee Conservationist and subscribe at tnconservationist.org.
Join other conservation enthusiasts and follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
For a fish that first appeared alongside dinosaurs and survived the calamity that wiped them out, the Lake Sturgeon has had a hard last half-century in Tennessee.
Once abundant in the state's waterways, wild Lake Sturgeon were last seen in Tennessee in 1963.
In 1998, the Tennessee Aquarium was among the organizations that founded the Lake Sturgeon Working Group. Since then, the group members have been hard at work raising and releasing baby Lake Sturgeon in hopes of re-establishing a stable wild population in the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers.
This year, that effort celebrates 25 years of releasing sturgeon raised in human care, and recent findings by wildlife managers suggest those years of effort may finally be bearing fruit.
Watch our scientists help with spawning wild Lake Sturgeon in Wisconsin: https://youtu.be/ew_4yDb3Ccw
Episode Cast
The Podcast Aquatic is made possible by support from The Tennessee Conservationist, the official magazine of Tennessee State Parks.
Printed sustainably on 100% post-consumer recycled paper with UV ink, each issue is filled with fascinating stories about Tennessee’s native species, rich history, and unique culture. It’s also your guide to exploring state parks and planning your next outdoor adventure.
Become a Tennessee Conservationist and subscribe at tnconservationist.org.
Join other conservation enthusiasts and follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
To the general public, the acronym "AZA" might be largely meaningless, but in the zoo and aquarium world, it's associated with the gold standard by which all aspects of a zoological organization is measured, especially the animals' well being.
The Association of Zoos and Aquariums was founded more than 100 years ago in 1924. It now comprises more than 9,000 individual members and has accredited more than 250 institutions worldwide.
In this episode — recorded live at AZA's annual conference in Tampa, Florida — AZA President & CEO Dan Ashe talks about what it means to hold zoos and aquariums to this incredibly high standard, how it (like its member institutions) has had to change over the last century and the pride he takes in AZA's many global conservation-focused efforts around the world.
Learn more about AZA's Saving Animals From Extinction (SAFE) Program: https://www.aza.org/aza-safe
Episode cast
The Podcast Aquatic is made possible by support from The Tennessee Conservationist, the official magazine of Tennessee State Parks.
Printed sustainably on 100% post-consumer recycled paper with UV ink, each issue is filled with fascinating stories about Tennessee’s native species, rich history, and unique culture. It’s also your guide to exploring state parks and planning your next outdoor adventure.
Become a Tennessee Conservationist and subscribe at tnconservationist.org.
Join other conservation enthusiasts and follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
From impossibly flexible, boneless bodies and mastery of camouflage to an over-abundance of brains and hearts, octopuses are like aliens come down from on high to boggle the minds of biologists.
In this short-form, Mic Droplet episode of the podcast, the Aquarium’s resident octopus specialist helps celebrate World Octopus Day by ticking off a few of the most-noteworthy facts about these amazing cephalopods and explains how in the actual heck you weigh a 50-pound octopus.
See what a morning in the life of an octopus caretaker looks like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMw9NkkqkmY
Episode cast
The Podcast Aquatic is made possible by support from The Tennessee Conservationist, the official magazine of Tennessee State Parks.
Printed sustainably on 100% post-consumer recycled paper with UV ink, each issue is filled with fascinating stories about Tennessee’s native species, rich history, and unique culture. It’s also your guide to exploring state parks and planning your next outdoor adventure.
Become a Tennessee Conservationist and subscribe at tnconservationist.org.
Join other conservation enthusiasts and follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
When it comes to the most impressive migrations in the animal kingdom , there are a few obvious standouts: the pole-to-pole voyage of the Arctic Tern; the horizon-spanning race of Wildebeests across the Serengeti; the bear-dodging spawning runs of Chinook Salmon.
In the insect world, however, pretty much everything pales in comparison to the daunting voyage of Monarch Butterflies from Central Mexico to Canada and back again. Every year, these tiny, beautiful insects embark on this trip, which takes multiple generations to complete ... except when it doesn't.
At the onset of fall, a single generation of butterflies completes the entire trip back to Mexico, a task that sounds laughably impossible for a featherweight insect with gossamer-delicate, three-inch wings. Yet they do it, every ... single ... year.
The Tennessee Aquarium sits squarely in the middle of the migration route for the eastern population of Monarch Butterflies, making it a prime viewing location for these orange-and-gold beauties as they make their way northward each fall. In this episode, the Aquarium's senior entomologist talks about Monarchs set people's hearts a-flutter, the biological processes that allow them to undertake their unbelievable trip and steps society is taking to protect Monarchs from the greatest threat of all: us.
Episode Cast
Additional Resources
The Podcast Aquatic is made possible by support from The Tennessee Conservationist, the official magazine of Tennessee State Parks.
Printed sustainably on 100% post-consumer recycled paper with UV ink, each issue is filled with fascinating stories about Tennessee’s native species, rich history, and unique culture. It’s also your guide to exploring state parks and planning your next outdoor adventure.
Become a Tennessee Conservationist and subscribe at tnconservationist.org.
Join other conservation enthusiasts and follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
It’s pretty much inarguable that sharks get a bad rap.
In a given year, a handful of humans are bitten by sharks, and of these, an even smaller number result in serious injuries or fatalities.
Flip the script, however, and sharks are far more likely to be the victims of "human attacks." Most data suggest about 100 MILLION sharks die each year due to intentional harvest, commercial by-catch or other human activity.
Yet despite this decidedly lop-sided relationship, many of us continue to fear sharks due to reports of shark bites that over-emphasize the aggressiveness of these sleek marine predators.
In this episode, Cristina Zenato -- a self-described "shark listener" -- talks about her and other ecologists' quest to understand how sharks behave, a view informed by countless positive interactions with them as a lifelong diver and researcher. She also discusses her role in the new giant-screen film, Shark Kingdom 3D, which is now playing at the Tennessee Aquarium IMAX 3D Theater!
View a trailer of Shark Kingdom 3D at: https://youtu.be/YQndv-lBy1g?si=jJybdwvk1VQUKK7b
To purchase tickets to see the film at the Tennessee Aquarium IMAX 3D Theater , visit https://tnaqua.org/imax
Learn more about Cristina's educational nonprofit, People of the Water, at http://pownonprofit.org/
Episode Cast
The Podcast Aquatic is made possible by support from The Tennessee Conservationist, the official magazine of Tennessee State Parks.
Printed sustainably on 100% post-consumer recycled paper with UV ink, each issue is filled with fascinating stories about Tennessee’s native species, rich history, and unique culture. It’s also your guide to exploring state parks and planning your next outdoor adventure.
Become a Tennessee Conservationist and subscribe at https://tnconservationist.org
Join other conservation enthusiasts and follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
At the Aquarium, we have animals of all sorts, from the beautiful and benign to graceful and powerful. Some of our residents could even, in some circumstances, be considered "dangerous."
How, then, do you see to the needs of species whose adaptations present a serious risk to their caretakers? What tools do you need? What mindset do you have to adopt?
In this episode, three caretakers of animals such as Electric Eels, Pacific Sea Nettles, American Alligators and ... River Otters? ... talk about how they approach ensuring the health of animals that pose a risk to theirs.
Episode Cast
The Podcast Aquatic is made possible by support from The Tennessee Conservationist, the official magazine of Tennessee State Parks.
Printed sustainably on 100% post-consumer recycled paper with UV ink, each issue is filled with fascinating stories about Tennessee’s native species, rich history, and unique culture. It’s also your guide to exploring state parks and planning your next outdoor adventure.
Become a Tennessee Conservationist and subscribe at tnconservationist.org.
Join other conservation enthusiasts and follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
Every year, hundreds of thousands of visitors explore the galleries of the Tennessee Aquarium. The hope is that those experiences help guests to form a meaningful bond with the natural world and to better understand the importance of freshwater and how our behavior impacts it. That aim is the same for every guest, regardless of their sensory challenges or whether they are a person living with an impairment.
In this episode, we talk about the efforts the Aquarium has made to improve accessibility, including being one of the first organizations in America to be certified as sensory-inclusive by Birmingham, Alabama-based nonprofit KultureCity.
We'll also hear directly from an Aquarium member about how those efforts to improving accessibility have directly benefited his son, who lives with autism, by making the Aquarium a safe, inspiring, joy-filled place to visit.
Episode Cast
For more information on the Aquarium's accessibility efforts, visit: https://tnaqua.org/plan-a-visit/accessibility-inclusion
Learn more about KultureCity at https://www.kulturecity.org/
Download the KultureCity app for:
The Podcast Aquatic is made possible by support from The Tennessee Conservationist, the official magazine of Tennessee State Parks.
Printed sustainably on 100% post-consumer recycled paper with UV ink, each issue is filled with fascinating stories about Tennessee’s native species, rich history, and unique culture. It’s also your guide to exploring state parks and planning your next outdoor adventure.
Become a Tennessee Conservationist and subscribe at tnconservationist.org.
Join other conservation enthusiasts and follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
If you're ever in the wild and encounter an animal that looks ghost-like — pale skin, scales or fur — your immediate thought might be that this is an example of albinism. Look a little closer, though, and there may be some tell-tale signs that you've actually chanced on something different, if just as interesting.
In our first-ever Mic Droplet, a shorter-format version of The Podcast Aquatic you know and love, we chat about leucism, how it differs from albinism and an exciting new opportunity to see it during your Aquarium visit.
Episode Cast
The Podcast Aquatic is made possible by support from The Tennessee Conservationist, the official magazine of Tennessee State Parks.
Printed sustainably on 100% post-consumer recycled paper with UV ink, each issue is filled with fascinating stories about Tennessee’s native species, rich history, and unique culture. It’s also your guide to exploring state parks and planning your next outdoor adventure.
Become a Tennessee Conservationist and subscribe at tnconservationist.org
Join other conservation enthusiasts and follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
Because many of the animals are on the other side of a layer of soundproof acrylic, exploring an aquarium is an experience that is intensely visual for most guests. Combined with the ever-increasing capabilities of the cameras in most phones, it's no surprise, then, that some of the most cherished souvenirs taken home by most visitors are selfies and snapshots.
But what if you want to level up your photography game so those images truly shine? In this episode, two Aquarium staff photographers — one relatively new, the other with images almost as old as the Aquarium itself — offer tips on how to overcome dark galleries and mirror-like exhibits to capture images that you'll cherish AND be proud to share with friends and your Insta followers.
See plenty of examples of Doug Strickland's images on the Aquarium's Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/tennesseeaquarium/
Episode Cast
The Podcast Aquatic is made possible by support from The Tennessee Conservationist, the official magazine of Tennessee State Parks.
Printed sustainably on 100% post-consumer recycled paper with UV ink, each issue is filled with fascinating stories about Tennessee’s native species, rich history, and unique culture. It’s also your guide to exploring state parks and planning your next outdoor adventure.
Become a Tennessee Conservationist and subscribe at tnconservationist.org
Join other conservation enthusiasts and follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
From loss of habitat to collection to supply the pet and medicinal trade, turtles all over the world are in serious trouble. Fortunately, turtles have organizations like the Turtle Survival Alliance looking out for them.
From its home in Charleston, South Carolina, to operations in more than 30 countries, the TSA is on the frontlines of breeding and protecting critically endangered turtles. They're also a long-time collaborator with the Tennessee Aquarium, which partners with the TSA in the Association of Zoos and Aquariums' Saving Animals From Extinction (SAFE) American Turtles program. You can also see some of the offspring of critically imperiled turtles raised by the TSA in the Aquarium's working turtle nursery.
Learn more about the Turtle Survival Alliance at https://turtlesurvival.org
Learn more about the AZA SAFE American Turtles program: https://youtu.be/fdnQ7Kd8czk?si=kgPG4XpIE3UNTysU
Episode Cast
The Podcast Aquatic is made possible by support from The Tennessee Conservationist, the official magazine of Tennessee State Parks.
Printed sustainably on 100% post-consumer recycled paper with UV ink, each issue is filled with fascinating stories about Tennessee’s native species, rich history, and unique culture. It’s also your guide to exploring state parks and planning your next outdoor adventure.
Become a Tennessee Conservationist and subscribe at tnconservationist.org.
Join other conservation enthusiasts and follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
Invasive Lionfish have been a big problem in the Gulf for decades. These beautiful, venomous visitors from the Indopacific wreak havoc on native fish populations. A single female is capable of producing 50,000 eggs every three days for her entire life, and once grown, Lionfish lack any natural predators to keep their populations from spiraling out of control.
Like many ecological conundrums, the presence of Lionfish in the Gulf is thought to be the result of human activity and may require human intervention to correct it.
For the last 10 years, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has led the Lionfish Invitational, a Lionfish culling event designed to prevent the species' spread into the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary, a series of deep-water reefs off the coast of Louisiana and Texas.
In this episode, four Tennessee Aquarium aquarists invited to take part in the Lionfish Invitational recount their time actively working to stave off an invasive species while also experiencing the real-life inspiration for the Aquarium's largest exhibit: the Secret Reef.
Watch a video of the Tennessee Aquarium's participation in the 2023 Lionfish Invitational: https://youtu.be/_FW_M_ebFZM?si=b8hCyz6v_L5bKDZR
Additional resources:
Episode Cast
The Podcast Aquatic is made possible by support from The Tennessee Conservationist, the official magazine of Tennessee State Parks.
Printed sustainably on 100% post-consumer recycled paper with UV ink, each issue is filled with fascinating stories about Tennessee’s native species, rich history, and unique culture. It’s also your guide to exploring state parks and planning your next outdoor adventure.
Become a Tennessee Conservationist and subscribe at tnconservationist.org.
Join other conservation enthusiastsand follow us on Facebook and Instagram
In this episode, meet two of the minds behind the design of the Aquarium’s many exhibits. Whether it’s prioritizing an animal’s wellbeing in its future home or ensuring a habitat has the best sightlines for guests, seeing an exhibit from an artistic concept to a walkable, explorable space is alengthy one, if often as invisible as it is hugely important.
Learn why the poison dart frog exhibit is our exhibitdesigner’s favorite habitat in the aquarium: https://youtu.be/a-qDFRaxUEo?si=eX8QCeWPz1TzMRlW
Check out our previous deep-dive episode focusing on thedesign, construction and ecological success of our large stream exhibit: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3pwR614ev4iW98NxGQXBiq?si=d185a2897c984ace
Episode Cast
The Podcast Aquatic is made possible by support from TheTennessee Conservationist, the official magazine of Tennessee State Parks.
Printed sustainably on 100% post-consumer recycled paperwith UV ink, each issue is filled with fascinating stories about Tennessee’s native species, rich history, and unique culture. It’s also your guide to exploring state parks and planning your next outdoor adventure.
Become a Tennessee Conservationist and subscribe at tnconservationist.org
Join other conservation enthusiasts and follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
Whether it's dreams of feeding sharks, corralling seahorses or culturing jellyfish, many visitors to aquariums wonder what it's like to work at a zoological institution or ... more particularly ... how to get a job there themselves.
In this episode Casey is joined in the Studio Dive Cage by a pair of Aquarium coworkers, one relatively new and one with more than 25 years under her belt, and a special guest from the Chattanooga Zoo.
Together, they tackle the highs and lows or what working with animals is like, whether they're directly involved or "animal adjacent." They also offer up some tested tips for how to make yourself a more appealing candidate to join the team.
Want to see what working at an aquarium is like, from an employee's perspective? Check out the Aquarium's Fish Person Point of View series, including cleaning and feeding Penguins' Rock, making lunch for Lemur Forest and tending to a "garden" of anemones.
Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjkmEccUchZbf2BYFLw0QDOL3_uzkkMnp
Episode Cast
The Podcast Aquatic is made possible by support from The Tennessee Conservationist, the official magazine of Tennessee State Parks.Printed sustainably on 100% post-consumer recycled paper with UV ink, each issue is filled with fascinating stories about Tennessee’s native species, rich history, and unique culture. It’s also your guide to exploring state parks and planning your next outdoor adventure.
Become a Tennessee Conservationist and subscribe at tnconservationist.org.
A Species Survival Plan (SSP) is a behind-the-scenes tool employed by zoos and aquariums to manage and promote the health of the entire population of a species in human care. By tracking genetics and making strategic decisions about where to move individuals in the interest of forming healthy breeding pairs, SSPs make top-down decisions in the interest of an entire species’ well-being.
At the same time, however, SSP decision can be a bittersweet pill to swallow for the devoted caretakers who form bonds, often deep ones, with the animals with which they work. Some day, those animals could be sent to another facility by an SSP decision, a move which can tug on a caretaker's heartstrings, even if that sadness is blunted by the knowledge that a relocation is being called for in the interest of making the entire population more robust.
Want to see how a recent SSP-prompted move helped provide much needed companionship for the Aquarium's lonely male Red-collared Brown Lemur? Check out this video to meet Kintana, a female Red-collared Brown who recently relocated to the Aquarium from the Dallas Zoo thanks to the species' SSP.
Episode Cast
The Podcast Aquatic is made possible by support from The Tennessee Conservationist, the official magazine of Tennessee State Parks.
Printed sustainably on 100% post-consumer recycled paper with UV ink, each issue is filled with fascinating stories about Tennessee’s native species, rich history, and unique culture. It’s also your guide to exploring state parks and planning your next outdoor adventure.
Become a Tennessee Conservationist and subscribe at tnconservationist.org.
Join other conservation enthusiasts and follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
Just in time for the summer travel season, this episode is a listener special, featuring answers to our fans' most-burning questions about our penguins, lemurs and river otters!
To check in live with our penguins and otters, check out the Aquarium's always-streaming web cams:
Episode Cast
They come in all shapes and sizes, but aquatic macroinvertebrates represent an important component of the food webs in streams. Whether its damselfly nymphs, crayfish or web-spinning caddisflies, these spineless organisms are a fascinating group of animals that are easy to overlook in favor of larger, more traditionally charismatic animals like fish, salamanders and aquatic mammals.
In this episode, we plunge into the oft-overlooked world of "water bugs," from where they live and why they matter to some of our favorites to meet while working in the streams of Southern Appalachia.
Learn more about Freshwaters Illustrated's film Hidden Rivers at https://www.freshwatersillustrated.org/hidden-rivers https://www.freshwatersillustrated.org/hidden-rivers
Episode Cast
Plastic pollution is a beachside menace on shorelines all over our planet. With a literal garbage truck worth of this manufactured waste entering the ocean every minute, this can seem like problem with no end much less a solution.
Fifteen years ago, Oregon-based artistic collective, Washed Ashore, found a more productive way to reuse plastic trash recovered from its coastline. By feeding this erstwhile waste into the hands of talented artists, Washed Ashore gives it new life as the skin, scale, fur and feathers of animals at scales that mirror plastic's impact on aquatic ecosystems the world over.
In this episode, we chat with Brad Parks, Washed Ashore's conservation and education director, about how these amazing sculptures are created, how he hopes they're received by the public and what animals he's still waiting to see rendered as plasticized art.
Episode Cast
Like anything humans try to do beneath the surface, underwater filmmaking poses a slew of challenges beyond those of terrestrial videography. Few people understand that as well as Tim Geers, who has decades of experience filming aquatic productions bound for the largest of screens and the smallest.
In addition to more than 20 years contributing to the Emmy Award-nominated web series, Jonathan Bird's Blue World, Geers also served as second unit director on the giant-screen film, Call of the Dolphins 3D.
In this episode, Geers joins host Casey Phillips in the studio dive cage to discuss why dolphin behavior endears them to humans, his philosophy about teaching the next generation of filmmakers and how his life goals align with those of a famous figure in the sci-fi epic Blade Runner.
Episode Cast
Considering it's one of the building blocks of life, it's ironic how dangerous water can be to the ill-equipped. And when it comes to deep water, humans are about as under-prepared for survival as it's possible to be.
Fortunately, despite our pitiful lung capacity and lack of fins, we're blessed with a heap of curiosity and ingenuity, which has given rise over the millennia to a variety of methods to explore beneath the surface. Absent a submarine in your backyard, the most accessible means of spending time underwater is the self-contained underwater breathing apparatus (aka SCUBA).
Here at the Aquarium, we dive all the time, whether it's to clean or enact repairs to our massive exhibits, to feed the animals or just to engage with the public. On this episode of the podcast, two of our senior dive specialist join one of our newest certified staff divers to explain what it's like experiencing the Aquarium from the other side of the acrylic and why it's worth all the work to earn your fins.
Episode cast
Casey Phillips, senior communications specialist, host-captain and certified landlubber Mark Craven, manager of dive operations and dive safety officer Chris Tucker, assistant dive safety officer Doug Strickland, communications content creator IIWant to dive with us?
Learn more about how to become a volunteer diver and apply at: https://tnaqua.org/volunteer/scuba-diver/
Resources
Watch our aquarist dive to feed Ripsaw Catfish: https://youtube.com/shorts/jJFw3gAnIAU How we safely dive alongside sharks: https://youtube.com/shorts/dkVRsM23-FM Diving to help cull Lionfish in Florida during the Lionfish Invitational: https://youtu.be/_FW_M_ebFZM Putting on a show cleaning alongside Paddlefish and Crappie: https://youtu.be/TWJ2-ly5e7M