CFI Newsletter: February 2025
Happenings in the Hatchery
Anticipation of Spawning Season
In the winter, the facility feels a little empty. Most of the fish that had called CFI home for the year were released into their respective streams and rivers by the late fall. In 2024 we produced over 15,000 fish and released nearly 12,800 of those fish into wild habitats! We do keep some fish over-winter, though. These are typically our breeders, who we either keep from last year’s spawning season or have collected sometime in the second half of the year to ready for the upcoming spawning season. It’s best to collect them at this time because collecting them too close to their spawning season can cause unnecessary stress and have potentially negative impacts on their reproduction that year.
One positive thing about having a more empty facility in the winter is that it gives us the opportunity to do larger renovations to ready us for the upcoming spawning season. This winter we’ve been able to put the finishing touches on our two-year project of replacing all of our racks (that house the recirculating systems in which our fish live) with new, galvanized steel racks. Obtaining these new racks was made possible by a grant from the JEM Project, and we couldn’t be more thankful for their support. Smaller renovations typically include re-working recirculating systems for spawning and rearing, or, if a project has recently ended, breaking down that system to prep it for its next species!
CFI is happy to welcome two new volunteers to our Volunteer Program for the spring! Rylan is currently a student at Pellissippi State Community College and spent a couple days volunteering at CFI last semester to earn scholarship hours. Noah is a recent graduate of Maryville College with aspirations to pursue a master’s degree in the wildlife and fisheries field.
Our next Volunteer Season will be the summer from May-August. Applications for the summer season will go out in early April, and orientation will be one of the first two weekends in May.
We are constantly overjoyed by the support and interest we receive for our Volunteer Program. In 2024 we had 16 volunteers in our program and brought in 2 more to acquire hours for local university scholarships. In total, these volunteers donated nearly 1,500 hours of their time to conservation! We are so grateful that these folks choose to spend their valuable time with us to save the fish.
Warm Welcome
We’d like to introduce everyone to Jackson Booth, the newest addition to our team here at CFI! Jackson will be working with us as a Conservation Biologist at our facility in Knoxville before transferring his position to Dale Hollow National Fish Hatchery to build up a non-game propagation and grow-out program at their facility as an extension of Conservation Fisheries, Inc.
Jackson has recently defended his Master’s thesis at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, where his research was focused on an apparent gap in Walleye spawning range in the St. Lawrence River and used an experimental egg stocking to both assess if one of the tributaries could support Walleye eggs and larvae while potentially reintroducing a spawning population to the area. During his time at ESF, he worked at the Thousand Islands Biological Station where he conducted his research, helped run surveys, and assisted with the propagation of Northern Pike, Muskellunge, and Walleye. While working with these species, Jackson realized he had a passion for raising early life stages of fish and aquaculture and wanted to focus this on rare and imperiled species.
Save the Date
Sunday February 2nd, 2025 | Resilient Rivers Winter Dinner at The Brookside on Central
Join Conservation Fisheries, Inc. for a magical evening on Sunday, February 2nd, 2025 at The Brookside for our Resilient Rivers Winter Dinner! This special event focuses on connection and celebration as we unite to protect our local rivers and the fish that call them home.
Savor a delicious meal from Knoxville’s own Tarik’s North African and Paysan Bread, sure to warm your spirits. As you enjoy your dinner, be inspired by our speaker, Solomon David, who will share uplifting stories about our efforts to safeguard biodiversity and the powerful impact we can have together.
We look forward to an evening rich in community and purpose as we support our Resilient Rivers, one delicious bite at a time.
(If you’re reading this after the fundraiser or weren’t able to attend but would still like to contribute, please visit our Donation page and mention the fundraiser in your comments!)
That’s all for now!
Check back in with us at our Events Page for more upcoming events!
Species Spotlight
Bluemask Darters are a fan favorite of biologists and community members alike!
CFI has been working with Bluemask Darters for over a decade, beginning in 2013, to develop propagation protocols, assist in restoring native populations, and monitor those populations. During this time we’ve been partnered with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Tennessee Valley Authority, Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (and the Cumberland River Aquatic Center), and Tennessee Technological University to band together for this neat little fish.
Bluemask Darters have a lot of personality, and have given us a run for our money! The males exhibit beautiful blues and oranges during their spawning season, including their signature “blue mask” on their faces! They are broadcast spawners, laying their eggs in fine gravel. The larvae that hatch from these eggs are among the smallest we work with here at CFI, and definitely the smallest darter larvae. At such a small size they require a very specialized diet, ensuring whatever we feed them is small enough for their little mouths to eat. They’re an extremely sensitive species, and although we’ve worked with them for over a decade, we are always looking for ways to improve the protocols for working with them to ensure a productive year.
In the wild, Bluemask Darters live within the Caney Fork River System in middle Tennessee. They are often found near spring upwellings, which helps to aerate the eggs that they deposit in the substrate during spawning season. These areas are often quite cool, and because of this, at CFI we often keep the Bluemask Darters on a chiller so they don’t get too warm. When they do get too cold, Bluemasks will burrow their whole bodies below the substrate! We’ve observed this in our facility and assume they do this in the wild as well.
In January of this year we released the remainder of our Bluemask Darters into the wild to allow them enough time to acclimate to their wild environment before the year’s spawning season. We won’t be working with Bluemasks again this year, as we and other organizations involved are currently waiting to hear the next set of conservation goals from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service before further restoration plans are discussed, but look forward to a time where they can return to our facility!
Community Outreach
SturgeonFest
SturgeonFest is a yearly celebration of Lake Sturgeon in Tennessee! While sturgeon are not a species we work with at CFI, their restoration in Tennessee rivers is a conservation success to be proud of. The event was hosted at Seven Islands State Birding Park by the Friends of Seven Islands Foundation and TVA, in collaboration with Warm Springs National Fish Hatchery. This year, CFI’s Director Bo Baxter created a fun Sturgeon Slide, allowing community members to release these young sturgeon into the French Broad without getting too close to the water. The event was a hit and everyone had a blast!
Streamside: An art showcase celebrating ecology in East TN
CFI had a great time hosting artists and photographers that are not only friends of our organization, but ecology-minded and extremely talented folks. The gallery was hosted at Albright Grove Brewing as a part of Knoxville’s First Friday, a monthly showcase celebrating art throughout the city. We’ve been enjoying hosting these galleries and look forward to the next one!
The artists featured were: @andrew.zimmerman.photography, @astertreat, @baileynfritz, @enchantingectotherms, @greenheroncreations, @isaacszabo, @sockceramics
Updated Tour Program
CFI is very excited to launch our new Tour Program! It’s always a pleasure to talk with students, professionals, and community members about the work that we do, and it’s even more meaningful when we can show them! We’ve been thrilled at the increased interest in facility tours so we have developed a tour program to best accommodate everyone.
All tours will need to be requested through our website on our Tour Program page. There are three categories of tours: Academic, Agencies/Organizations, and Personal. We recommend tours are requested at least 2-4 weeks in advance of your suggested dates. We offer all tours free of charge, but as a non-profit organization are always accepting donations for our time.
Season Highlights
Field Work
While nearly all of our field work is done from spring-fall, there is still some work to be done in the winter! Most of our winter field work is dedicated to releases, to get the final handful of fish out of their tanks and into their native waters. Just on the cusp of fall and winter we monitored for Barrens Topminnows in one of the sites we released them earlier this year. Unfortunately we found that site to be very shallow and had to perform a rescue to make sure there were no fish there if the small spring pond dried up. A huge thanks to our partners at Wolf Creek National Fish Hatchery for housing the fish that were rescued! We hope to see improved conditions in that area, but for now that population will continue to reside in captivity.
In addition to the Bluemask Darter release that is mentioned in the Species Spotlight above, we also had a Yellowfin Madtom (below) release to the Clinch River. These individuals were initially destined for the French Broad, but due to impacts from Hurricane Helene, the French Broad needs assessment before we can release any of our rare, propagated fish there.
On a more positive note, other winter “field” work we had included transferring some of our species to partner facilities! The Marion State Fish Hatchery in North Carolina partners with us for two of our North Carolina species - the Carolina Madtom and Roanoke Logperch (which was recently petitioned for delisting from the Endangered Species List!). Marion will help us grow-out these fish to a larger size before releasing them to their restoration sites. We’ve also swapped a handful of Barrens Topminnow breeders with the Tennessee Aquarium to increase the genetic diversity in each of our respective captive populations.
Professional Networking
During the cooler months there is always a ton of opportunity for networking within the fisheries field! We had staff members attend the Southeastern Fishes Council meeting and plan to attend the upcoming Tennessee Chapter of the American Fisheries Society meeting. A few of our biologists were invited to attend a professional mixer held by the University of Tennessee Wildlife and Fisheries Society to chat with students about careers in conservation. Our director, Bo Baxter, has attended and presented at several fisheries and aquatics workshops, representing the conservation of the smaller fishes in southeastern rivers and streams. No matter the format, CFI staff are always happy to attend these networking events to catch up with our colleagues, talk with students about opportunities, and generally nerd out about fish.
Partner Feature
The folks at Saint Tattoo are quickly becoming some of our favorite people and local partners. After hearing that a few artists at Saint have an interest in ecology and fishing, we knew we wanted to start working with them. We hosted a group for a facility tour and brought a few of them out into one of our local streams where they kissed hogsuckers and became comfortable swimming among the fishes. Last summer the shop hosted a Fish Flash Fundraiser, creating beautifully intricate designs of the species that we work with and among, tattooing them on the arms and legs of locals who also love to nerd out on ecology. Since the summer is a tough time for field biologists to get tattoos, the shop hosted a smaller event just for CFI biologists in December so we could get these flash tattoos, too!
Saint Tattoo is Knoxville’s Best Tattoo Shop as voted by the readers of Metropulse and the Knoxville News Sentinel for over a decade. Their artisans are internationally recognized as being some of the best in the business. They renew their commitment to being the best by traveling the North American Tattoo Conference circuit interacting with the best artists from all over the country learning new techniques and materials that make the application of their craft second to none. Saint Tattoo’s flash is all hand painted and one of a kind, with thousands of designs to choose from all over their shop. Their artists are well versed in several styles, including American and Japanese traditional, color illustrative, line-work, and solid tattooing.
With a new year having started, we’re in talks with Saint Tattoo about hosting yet another Fish Flash day! If you missed out last year, or if you just want more cool fish tattoos, stay tuned for an announcement later this year.
Gratitude
Even in this chilly winter Tennessee weather, our hearts are so warm knowing that we have the support of such a great community. Thank you for helping us Save the Fish.
— The CFI Team