10-24 Trout spawning at TNACI (by Daphne T.)

Today we had the opportunity to watch the collection of Brooke Trout’s sperm and eggs. Even though it sounds a bit gross, it was actually a really interesting process.

Brooke Trout were Native in some streams in our general area, but in the 1930s, loggers came in and ruined their habitat. Rainbow Trout were used to stock up the streams instead of Brooke Trout. Now, TNACI is experimenting to see whether or not Brooke Trout can survive in some of these same streams.

Kathlina Alford at the TNACI propagation facility captures Brooke Trout and raises them for breeding in order to increase their population in our area. To breed these fish, she collects sperm and eggs from the Brooke Trout that are kept in her tanks (which are freeeeezing by the way). These Brooke Trout were pretty young- from 2013 and 2014.

 

Collecting trout from the tanks 

First, we collected the fish from the cold tanks with nets and sorted them out  by gender. Kathalina explained that females have a rounder, fatter belly, and are dull in color while males are more colorful and have a locked jaw that juts out.

 Next, water temperature, pH level, and the dissolved oxyegen in the water of the tanks were recorded.

           

Third, each fish (we did males first) was put into a solution of Tricane, a substance that is used to drug the fish so the fish are easier to work with.

After this, the fish’s PIT tag (a small identity tag) was scanned so the fish could be recognized, and the sperm could be recorded.

 

Next, each was dried off with a towel, measured to the millimeter, and weighed to the .1 gram.

Finally, Katalina took the fish and squeezed its abdomen. If it was successful, a small white drop would come out of the fish: a sperm! But if it wasn’t successful, poop was the result. A designated person recorded whether or not the fish donated sperm.

Figure 1 you can tell this fish was successful because of the white drops inside of the bowl! 

Sperm is only good enough for about two hours so this process had to move quickly! After all the sperm of Brooke Trout from the 2013 was collected, it was put in the fridge and the 2014 fish were squeezed. The younger ones had less sperm to give, but sperm nonetheless.

After the males were squeezed, it was time for the females! The process was almost exactly the same. One difference was that the females were weighed once before they were squeezed and again after they had no more eggs left. This is because some females can give up to 40% of their body weight when losing eggs! Needless to say, after they are rid of their eggs, their bellies become puny and floppy.

When the first female was squeezed, I was shocked at how many eggs the tiny fish contained. They were yellow and round and a lot bigger than the sperm. However, some female fish that were squeezed and didn’t give any eggs. These fish are called “green”. This means that the fish has eggs, but they aren’t ready to be fertilized.

Although we were a little bit squeamish at first, this process of collecting sperm and eggs was a really cool to watch and we learned a lot! We are sad that this was our last time at the propagation facility! Thank you so much to Kathlina for letting up help out a little bit and for teaching us a lot of stuff about Sturgeon and Brooke Trout!

Pre-release sturgeon preparations (By Hannah P.)

Hi everyone! It’s Hannah and last week we had another day at TNACI! Today, the condition factor of the sturgeon was measured. The condition factor includes the length and weight of each fish. We took 30 sturgeon out of each tank (grouped by size) and placed them in buckets of water. Next, we took the fish and measured their length in millimeters. We also massed each fish in grams and took a sample of their fin for later genetic experimentation.

 We recorded all of the data in a chart and the fin clip of each fish was matched up with the length and weight. We repeated this process for each of the three tanks and became very efficient (or e-fish-ent) at measuring the fish.  Kathlina explained that the scutes of the 2014 fish will also be cut in a particular way to identify them as 2014 fish. This is a less expensive method of tagging the fish. A scute is an armor plate similar to a scale.

            This was a nice goodbye to the sturgeon. All of the sturgeon were released on the French Broad river near Knoxville on October 23^rd. It has been such a great experience watching these fish grow and helping take care of them! Stay tuned for our next visit when we help spawn trout!

Tennessee River Rescue- October 4 (by Daphne T.)

The Tucker River Fellows, some members from the GPS crew team, some members of PIC (Partnerships In the Community at GPS) and other good citizens of GPS woke up bright and early on Saturday morning October 4 to participate in the Tennessee River Rescue happening all around Chattanooga. Although most of us were groggy and sleepy from a late night at the McCallie/Baylor football game, this outing turned out to be very fun! 

We picked up our trash grabbers, gloves, and trash bags from the River Rescue organizers at Coolidge park and headed towards the boathouse to pick up our boats. All of us ferried over to Maclellan Island (also known as Audubon Island) in johnboats and canoes. 

When we got to the island we all began working hard picking up the trash that peppered the ground on the small island. Some of us played music and made this not-so-fun sounding activity a great and productive way to spend a Saturday morning! Although we spent several hours on the island, we only made a dent on the surface of the all the trash that littered the island. I would enjoy going back to Maclellan Island to help save the environment and pick up some more trash. 

We accidently located a geocache ammo box full of interesting items on the island; we won’t tell you where it is, but a geocaching hunt might be a nice excuse for an outing to the island. Some items found during our trash clean-up included a toilet seat, lots of styrofoam, some tires and a 50 gallon plastic bucket with unknown original contents. We crossed paths with some boysouts enjoying fishing during a fish derby day. We also came across some people enjoying a campout on the island that is part of the blueway canoe trail system. 

Sept. 30- behind the scenes at the TN aquarium- by Amanda M.

Today the Tucker River Fellows went to the Tennessee Aquarium and met up with our friend Kathlina Alford to take a “behind the scenes” tour of the aquarium. We got a view from above the tanks and watched as someone went scuba diving! All of the water from the tanks is form our own Tennessee River (they just filter and add the salt) and the coral is made of concrete. The aquarium is careful to conserve the water they use in the tanks. 

Some fun facts we learned:

-each suction cup on the octopus is controlled separately

-spider crabs loose legs when the get scared but they grow back (we heard a story about one who was shipped and came into the aquarium with no legs at all!)

-sharks lose teeth constantly and some of them are for sale in the gift shop

-the aquarium has its own Vet Lab where they can perform surgery on any of the animals. They also have a waterproof x-ray machine. 

-they freeze food and give it to the birds so they have to work hard to get their favorite snack.

We are so glad you are reading about what we do and can’t wait to get others involved!