Well, I thought it would be easier to keep up with Newsletter writing over the winter. Wrong! I can’t remember a busier “off” season. Unfortunately, most of that time has been spent at the computer rather than with our hands in the water. Oh well….

We had a great “Recovery Team” meeting in February. This is where all of our cooperators get together to review the past year and plan for the future. There is a lot of exciting work going on and more planned for the future. We are fortunate to be surrounded by such a talented lot! Thanks everyone!

We have not been totally idle in the hatchery lately. Our slackwater darters, Etheostoma boschungi, have started spawning. I wish I could say we have been able to observe their spawning behavior, but so far, they have not been very cooperative. We NEVER see them doing ANYTHING. I have set up the video camera repeatedly trying to catch them doing something. Every time, I get to watch 90 minutes of nothing when I get home.

Despite this, we have been able to recover our first eggs this week. They have not been very cooperative there either! Rather than depositing eggs on the nylon mops we provided them, they used the low-cropped algae growing on the rocks and substrate. We will give you a full report when we have more. But, I will say, these are beautiful fish!

Perhaps the most daunting project coming up is a planned CFI expansion! We are exploring the options right now. At this point, we do not know if we will be moving into a completely new space, or simply adding a second facility space. Either way, it will have to happen pretty soon. Our current space is about full! Our dream is to be able to move into a permanent facility somewhere in the Knoxville vicinity.

Over the next month, we will be gearing up for much of our spawning work. After the slackwater darters, we expect to see goldline darters, Percina aurilineata, going next followed by duskytail darters, E. percnurum, and relict darters, E. chienense. Then there will be the madtoms, spotfin chubs, Barrens topminnows……..Whew! Something tells me we have yet to see busy! There should be a lot to update by the next newsletter. Thank-you all for your support!