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

• Casey Phillips, senior communications specialist, host, lapsed shutterbug
• Doug Strickland, communications content creator II
• Todd Stailey, AV technician/staff photographer

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

• Casey Phillips, host, senior communications specialist and anti-turtle smuggler
• Marc Dupuis-Desormeaux, Turtle Survival Alliance CEO
• Dave Collins, Turtle Survival Alliance senior director of domestic conservation
• Bill Hughes, herpetology collections coordinator

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:

• Impacts of the Invasive Lionfish (NOAA): https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/southeast/ecosystems/impacts-invasive-lionfish
• Understanding the pain experience of lionfish envenomation study (NIH): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10789455/
• Scientific studies produced from the Lionfish Invitational: https://www.lionfishinvitational.com/publications

Episode Cast

• Casey Phillips, host/senior communications specialist
• Avery Millard, senior aquarist
• Kimberly Hurt, senior aquarist
• Kyle McPheeters, lead aquarist (life support systems)

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 a lengthy one, if often as invisible as it is hugely important.

Learn why the poison dart frog exhibit is our exhibit designer’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

• Casey Phillips, senior communications specialist/host  
• Jeff Worley, director of exhibits/graphics
• Thom Demas, vice president and chief husbandry and exhibits officer

 

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

• Casey Phillips, host and senior communications specialist
• Brenda Salgado, aquarist II
• Loribeth Lee, assistant curator of forests
• Amanda Eckhart, animal care supervisor (Chattanooga Zoo)

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

• ​Casey Phillips, senior communications specialist, host and SSP novice
• ​Bill Hughes, herpetology collection coordinator
• ​Loribeth Lee, assistant curator of forests
• ​Maggie Sipe, lead animal care specialist (Ocean Journey)

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:

• River Otter Falls
• Penguins' Rock

Episode Cast

• Casey Phillips, show host and fellow otters/lemur/penguin stan
• Sam Grote, senior animal care specialist
• Tyler Schneider, senior animal care specialist
• Holly Gibson, senior animal care specialist

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.

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

• ​Casey Phillips, host and terrestrial vertebrate
• ​Rose Segbers, senior entomologist
• ​Cody Beavers, aquarist II
• ​Helaina Gomez, watershed conservation coordinator

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.

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

• Casey Phillips, host and reluctantly frequent user of plastic products
• Brad Parks, conservation/education director of Washed Ashore

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.

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

• Casey Phillips, host and fan of Jonathan Bird's Blue World
• Tim Geers, underwater cinematographer

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.