The Podcast Aquatic

In the English language, there are few words that convey a sense of finality quite like "extinction." The notion that a species could completely disappear from the planet forever — down to literally the last individual — is incredibly sobering.

But how "final" is extinction? How can scientists be sure that an animal has, in fact, completely disappeared forever?

As sampling and surveying techniques improve and more and more eyes and camera lenses are trained on broader and broader swaths of the planet, supposedly extinct animals like the Coelacanth and Attenborough's Long-beaked Echidna have been rediscovered like Lazarus rising from the grave.

In this quick-hit episode, we pose the question to our resident biologist of how extinction is determined, whether it's reversible and, if so, why bringing an animal back might not be a morally sound path to take.

Learn more about how our intervention saved the critically endangered Laurel Dace from near-certain extinction: https://youtu.be/NPcm_d-PsXk?si=xRy63_gWZ_ktvExF

Episode cast

• Casey Phillips, host, senior communications specialist, certifiably not extinct
• Dr. Bernie Kuhajda, aquatic conservation biologist

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.

Why are lemurs such messy eaters? Why would a penguin refuse to eat a delicious capelin? If a snake hasn't eaten in three months, should I be concerned?

If you think it's tough to feed your clan, consider the challenge of satiating more than 13,000 animals, all of which have different needs and preferences.

On the eve of the most glutton-y holiday of all, this Thanksgiving-special episode homes in on all the delectably meaty details when it comes to nutrition here at the Tennessee Aquarium.

Check out how many fish penguins can put down in a single sitting (waddling?) before undergoing their annual catastrophic molt: https://youtu.be/LFxelNv7Pwo

Episode cast

• Casey Phillips, host, senior communications specialist, life-long eater
• Dr. Chris Keller, staff veterinarian
• Thom Demas, vice president and chief husbandry & exhibits officer
• Kevin Calhoon, curator of forests

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 you were a student — assuming you aren't still one — did you ever imagine that your teacher lived at your school? Sometimes, educators can give so much of their time and energy (and occasionally their money) to their craft that it can certainly seem like a school is where they call home.

In reality, many teachers feel hamstrung at having to adapt their methods to their classroom facilities, working around inadequacies or equipment that doesn't quite meet their own needs or those of their students.

What if teachers were invited to help design those same classrooms, though? Wouldn't their input be a valuable asset in the learning process? Wouldn't it ease their frustration and make them more effective at their critically important jobs? As this episode goes live, the Tennessee Aquarium is just one day away from opening a major addition to its downtown Chattanooga campus: The S.T.R.E.A.M. Learning center, supported by UNUM.

This new facility sits next door to the Ocean Journey and River Journey buildings and will act as the hub of the Aquarium's previously decentralized educational efforts. Better still, its design was directly influenced by the educators who will be using it to teach and as a resource for professional development.

In this episode, we discover why we invited teachers to participate in the design process and how their input will impact the Aquarium's long-standing role as an educational resource to so many.

Episode cast

• Casey Phillips, host, senior communications specialist and proud teacher's son/brother-in-law
• Natali Rodgers, director of learning and evaluation
• Rachel Hargis, UNUM corporate social responsibility manager

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.

All her life, Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant was focused on one career ambition: to host a nature series like those that had so stoked her passion for animals early in life.

Decades later, Dr. Rae was an author and host to a hit podcast with a long list of academic achievements to her name. She was content and had come to terms with the thought that she might not be destined to grace the silver screen.

And then NBC came calling with an offer to co-helm one of the most well-respected, storied nature series to lead the revival of a legendary series: Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. Alongside co-host Peter Gros, she has visited wild faces and spaces across the world for Wild Kingdom Protecting the Wild, which recently began airing its third season in October.

In this episode, Dr. Rae chats about growing up apart from nature but no less entranced by it and her hopes and ambitions as an inspiration to new generations of animal lovers.

Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom Protecting the Wild airs Saturday mornings on NBC's "The More You Know" programming block. Check local airtimes and other ways to watch at mutualofomaha.com/wild-kingdom/article/how-to-watch-mutual-of-omahas-wild-kingdom-protecting-the-wild

Learn more about Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant's many projects via her website, raewynngrant.com/

Episode cast

• Casey Phillips, host and senior communications specialist
• Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant, author, wildlife ecologist, podcast host and co-host of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom Protecting the Wild

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.

There are some animals that don’t deal well with change. Or rather, they seem to somehow avoid being touched by the passage of time like they’re role playing as Peter Pan or Dorian Gray.

These lurkers on the edges of the evolutionary flow are what scientists have catchingly termed “living fossils.” One of the most well-known examples of being adverse-to-change are the lepisosteiformes, the taxonomic order of fishes more commonly known as “gars.”

These toothy-snooted, predominantly freshwater predators have a fearsome appearance but have come to be much beloved. This episode arrives concurrent with the annual celebration known as “Gar Week.” This weeklong social media event is the brainchild of the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation and offers an opportunity for the citizens of Earth to pay homage to these evolutionarily stubborn fishes.

This episode features special guest Dr. Solomon David, a well-known, socially media savvy gar expert, researcher and aquatic ecology professor from the University of Minnesota. Learn more about him at solomondavid.net/

[Check out Dr. David’s gar-geous photos and videos via his Instagram (instagram.com/solomon.r.david/) and TikTok (tiktok.com/@solomonrdavid).]

Episode cast

• Casey Phillips, host/senior communications specialist/podcast GARgoyle
• Dr. Solomon David, assistant professor, aquatic ecologist and principal investigator at GarLab (University of Minnesota)
• Dr. Bernie Kuhajda, aquatic conservation biologist (Tennessee Aquarium)

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.

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

• Casey Phillips, host, senior communications specialist and proud Appalachian
• Rachel Thayer, assistant curator of fishes and daughter of the Commonwealth (of Virginia)
• Bill Hughes, herpetology collection coordinator
• Kevin Calhoon, curator of forests
• Dr. Bernie Kuhajda, aquatic conservation biologist

[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

• Casey Phillips, host/senior/communications specialist
• Dr. Anna George, vice president conservation science & education
• Ed Scott, fisheries biologist, Tennessee Valley Authority (retired)
• Brandon Simcox, rivers and streams coordinator, Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency

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

• Casey Phillips, senior communications specialist, host and AZA member
• Dan Ashe, AZA president & CEO

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

• Casey Phillips, host and octopus hug survivor
• Danny Alexander, senior aquarist

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

• Casey Phillips, host, senior communications specialist and butterfly adorant
• Rose Segbers, senior entomologist

Additional Resources

• The Tennessee Aquarium's Butterfly Garden: https://tnaqua.org/exhibit/butterfly-garden/
• Flight of the Butterflies trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nww3L5b0wno
• Make Way for Monarchs (The Tennessee Conservationist): https://digital.tnconservationist.org/publication/?i=850997&article_id=5026054&view=articleBrowser
• Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation's Project Milkweed: https://xerces.org/milkweed

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.