Well, here it is January and we’re still not finished with our move! We have however, made a good deal of progress. Ceiling work has been completed and the electrician will have begun work (hopefully!) by the time this newsletter is published. We just received our racks that will house the tanks and vats and are in the process of setting them up. There’s a lot of work to be done still (no fish have been moved as of yet!), but when we’re finished, we will have a facility we can all be very proud of! The new facility will enable us to increase production of currently propagated species and enable us to take on additional projects that were impossible to consider up until now.

Our new address and contact numbers are:

Conservation Fisheries, Inc.

3424 Division St.

Knoxville, TN 37919

Phone: 865-521-6665

So many people have contributed to our efforts over the past year. Many are agency personnel (TWRA, USFWS, USFS etc…) and in addition to providing funding, have provided volunteers for field assistance and various other projects. Most of these have been acknowledged elsewhere at one time or another, and we continue to be grateful to them for their support! We would like to take this time, however, to acknowledge some of those that have probably not been mentioned in the past, but have contributed in one way or another to our cause over the past year.

The University of Tennessee Dept. of Forestry, Wildlife and Fisheries has provided space for us to rear spotfin chubs, Erimonax monachus. This has allowed us to examine differences in flow-through verses recirculating systems and their effect on growth rates and overall survival. This additional space has been a windfall for us, especially during our move! We would like to thank Drs. Larry Wilson and Richard Strange for arranging this space for CFI. We would also like to thank Joyce Coombs, Alison Ashby, Kim Cooper and Todd Sink for taking on daily maintenance chores associated with the keeping of these fish. You guys have been a huge help!

Along these same lines, we would like to thank Matt Hamilton and Chris Coco of the Tennessee Aquarium for all of their help, both in rearing fish and helping with field work.

Also from UT, Dr. David Etnier (now retired) and Ben Keck have provided valuable field assistance. Having Ets along on the Clinch may well have provided that element of luck that allowed us to find that lone slender chub! Be prepared to get wet again next spring, Ets!

Bo Baxter and Peggy Shute from the TVA Natural Heritage Program and Nanci Jackson have all helped in the field and Jason Khym, also of TVA, has been valuable in helping us design computerized field notes and data base.

Matt Troxler has provided volunteer assistance on many occasions in the field as well as around the hatchery. Ben Clayton assisted in the field on several ocassions. Keith Wehner has provided useful ideas for various projects around the new facility and has helped with numerous projects around CFI in the past.

James Spalvings was instrumental in locating our new building. Greg Shanks donated his time to review the lease arrangement for our new facility. Casper Cox of Chattanooga, TN has volunteered field assistance in the past and is helping us with signage at the new facility!

John Graf of Knoxville has donated a portion of his labor to CFI in the improvements to our new facility and did a great job in completing his work quickly, allowing us to proceed with our move!

Charles West took a considerable amount of time to draw up plans for the layout of our new facility, provided us with several items of office and electrical equipment, and has been an invaluable consultant throughout this whole (somewhat overwhelming!) project. We greatly appreciate his help!

Todd Hunt of URS Corporation in Franklin, TN donated a considerable amount of lab equipment to CFI. This will go a long way toward supplying us with many of the laboratory items we wished we had in the past, but never did! This was a much appreciated contribution!

Once again, Jungle Products has contributed greatly to our cause by providing sponge filters for us to use throughout the hatchery. These are air driven filters that provide great biological filtration, but more importantly, serve as a back-up if any of the water circulation fails in any of the systems. Their contribution is greatly appreciated and shows a commitment to protecting our native fishes on their part! Thanks again Jungle!

Several foundations, corporations and organizations have contributed funding to CFI over the past year, including: The Alcoa Foundation, International Paper, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and the World Wildlife Fund. These have all been acknowledged elsewhere, but we just wanted to extend an additional thanks to them here! And, as usual, we are greatly appreciative of the continued support we receive from all of our funding agencies.

Last, but not least, we would like to extend a special thanks to Dick Biggins! Dick retired from the USFWS this year, but continues to be active in aquatic conservation around the region. So much of what has been accomplished in our region can be traced to efforts initiated by Dick. He’s a great friend to our rivers and streams!

I would also like to offer a personal thanks to Pat, Sherry and Amanda! Pat has had to put in more time than usual checking up on the UT fish, trying to be two places at once many times! This, on top of trying to keep us caught up with our report writing! Sherry has kept the moving on track (at least more than Pat and I would on our own!). And, Amanda has had to spend many hours alone at the "old" facility looking after the fish while we work on the "new" facility.

Thanks to all of you! I’m sure some have been left off of this list, and to those I offer an apology for doing so and Thanks! Next month, we'll have some fish news!

J. R. Shute 01/14/03