Some exciting things have happened over the past month! First, we are going to be moving our facility over the next couple of months. We have finally found a building to lease in our area that fits our needs. The building is 5000 square feet (more than twice what we currently have) with a large fenced area that we may someday expand into. Both the inside and outside of the building will require a lot of work before we’re able to move in. But once we’re in there, we should be able to greatly increase fish production and the additional space will allow us to take on several projects we have “waiting in the wings”.

We’ll need lots of help accomplishing this task! We’re going to have to call on all of our supporters to do what they can to help over the next few months. Any contributions of time, materials or funds will be greatly appreciated! Feel free to contact us to see how you can help!

More News!!!

Now, for the fun stuff! This month, we made our first reintroductions into the Tellico River. The ruling to designate this river as a Non-Essential Experimental Population was published this fall (see CFI Newsletter #14). A couple of weeks ago, we released around 2500 spotfin chubs, Erimonax monachus, into the Tellico.  These releases will be followed next spring with additional spotfins, smoky and yellowfin madtoms, Noturus baileyi and N. flavipinnis, and duskytail darters, Etheostoma percnurum.  We were encouraged by the condition of the river and the abundance of great looking habitat there. We snorkeled at the first release site (the fish were released at two sites on two consecutive days) the following day. We were able to quickly see 20 or more of the spotfins released the day before. They looked happy! They were mingling with other juvenile shiners and were actively feeding.

A portion of these spotfins were reared at the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga. They have been instrumental in helping relieve our overcrowding problems at our current facility. As always, we really appreciate their participation!

And finally……. We were very excited this month to finally collect a slender chub, Erimystax cahni, in the Clinch River!

The slender chub, certainly one of the rarest fishes in North America, has not been seen since around 1996, when one specimen was found at a different site in the Clinch River. Before that, several had been collected in the Clinch in the mid-1980s. Slender chubs were found in the Powell and Clinch Rivers in varying numbers up until the late 1970s and early 1980s. Since then, only a few specimens have turned up in the Clinch and none have been seen in the Powell for probably 20 years. Both the Clinch and Powell have seen significant fish kills due to mining activities and chemical spills over the past 20 years or so in addition to the regular non-point source degradation that so many of our southeastern rivers have suffered. Still, both of these rivers support an impressive diversity of fishes and mussels. Finding this one chub has encouraged us! We were beginning to worry that this interesting minnow might be gone for good! We have revisited the collection site once, but were unable to collect any additional specimens. We will try to get back out this fall, but cold weather is rapidly approaching and may hinder our efforts. Despite this, just knowing that there are still slender chubs living in the Clinch certainly boosted our spirits and has encouraged us to step up our efforts to find more.

We have spawned and reared two closely related chubs, E. dissimilis and E. insignis in the past and are confident that when we locate more slender chubs, we will be able to propagate them as well. We will certainly post any findings we have of this rare fish! By the way, the one specimen is doing well at our facility where it is housed with a school of similar streamline chubs.  

Good Press....

There have been several good articles covering our work published in the media lately. Check these out:

Spotfin Chub Release

Slender Chub Discovery

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