Ocean Life and More!

…continuing with a recent visit by Laurie’s sister, her husband Bill, and their granddaughter Avery. 

More about our exploration of the Tennessee Aquarium…

The first portion of our tour of Chattanooga’s aquarium was the freshwater segment of the attraction.  It was called “River Journey”.  Appropriately enough, this impressive ten-story high, 60,000 sq. ft. structure is called “Ocean Journey”.  This major expansion of the aquarium opened in 2005 and it contains 700,000 gallons of water in its various displays.

This is a view from an upper level deck of the Ocean Journey building overlooking the Tennessee River.  The River Journey building is at the left.

FYI, the Tennessee Aquarium formerly operated a high speed water-jet propelled boat on the River.  It was called the “River Gorge Explorer”. 

Apparently it didn’t attract enough visitors to justify the expense of operations and the Aquarium decided to reinvest its resources elsewhere.  Luckily, Laurie and I, along with her sisters Bonnie and Karole made the River Gorge Explorer trip back in 2017.  Cruises ended in January 2018. We loved it!

Note:

·       The Tennessee River flows southwest, then west and finally north.  It is about 652 miles long and it’s the largest tributary of the Ohio River.  Thanks to Tennessee Valley dams and locks, it is navigable from Knoxville Tennessee down all the way to the Ohio River and it’s connected via the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway south to the Gulf of Mexico.

On Level 4 of the Ocean Journey building, we visited the Lemur Forest and watched the Red-Ruffed Lemurs and Ringtail Lemurs explore their environment.  Red-Ruffed Lemurs, which occupy a small corner of Madagascar are critically endangered in the wild and only about 590 exist in captivity.

While more widespread and with over 2,000 in captivity, Ringtail Lemurs are a bit less threatened.  Ringtail Lemurs reproduce easily in captivity and they are seen in many zoos worldwide.  However, they are listed as endangered due to habitat destruction, hunting for bush meat and the exotic pet trade.

All Lemurs come from the island Nation of Madagascar in the western Indian Ocean.  The island is only about 250 miles east of Africa but entirely different species of flora and fauna have evolved on this very large and remote island.  It’s about the size of Texas. Over 90% of its animals do not exist elsewhere!

This is Stingray Bay.  It’s the Aquarium’s largest touch tank with more than 100 feet of visitor accessibility.  Visitors can touch several different shark species as well as a number of stingrays.  An aquarium staff member is on hand to share information about these animals…and I’m sure to keep people out of the pool.

I took this photo of a colorful pond in one of the exhibits…just because it was so eye-catching!

I didn’t keep track but the pond in the photo above this one may have been in the Ocean Journey’s Butterfly Garden as shown above.  I was unable to capture a usable photo of any butterflies but this is what the butterfly garden looked like.  There are tropical flowers, a waterfall and hundreds of free-flying colorful butterflies from Asia, Africa, South and Central America. 

There were also a number of colorful ground dwelling and ground feeding birds living in the Butterfly Garden.  This is a female Crested Wood Partridge.  They come from Malaysia, Borneo and Sumatra.  The Aquarium maintains a ‘breeding flock’ of 2 males and 3 females.

How could any aquarium or zoological park not have a penguin exhibit?  While they really aren’t my favorites, kids love them!  Residing in a cold weather environment of their own, the crowd was fascinated by these bundles of black and white.

 

There are 2 species in this exhibit, the Gentoo and the Macaroni Penguins.  Gentoo penguins are listed as least endangered despite an estimated breeding population of only 600,000.  On the other hand, Macaroni Penguins may number as many as 18,000,000 but due to recent serious declines in some area, they are considered vulnerable.  Gentoo penguins average about 13 lbs. and Macaroni penguins weigh about 10 lbs. 

I included a photo of this salt water fish tank mainly because, unlike the vast majority of my pictures, this one wasn’t blurry.  While I like the photo, I can’t identify that large fish…

Note: As pointed out by my kin and namesake in the comments below, this does appear to be one of the many varieties of Triggerfish.

Sharks always draw an audience!  In this case, a staff member was talking about the fish in the Secret Reef Exhibit and scuba divers were preparing to answer questions from underwater.  The Secret Reef is a truly impressive display tank with a manmade reef modeled after one about 110 miles from Galveston Texas in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Secret Reef is home to both Sand Tiger Sharks and Sandbar aka Brown Sharks.  The Sand Tiger aka Gray Nurse Shark isn’t generally aggressive with people.  It’s a good thing as they reach lengths of 10 ft. and can weigh 250 lbs.  The Sandbar Sharks ‘only’ reach a length of about 8 ft. and they actually avoid people… The boy in the photo seems enamored with that Sand Tiger Shark.

The Ocean Journey’s jellyfish exhibit was pretty impressive and spookily beautiful too.  They are found in the Boneless Beauties Gallery.  There are as many as 2,000 different Jellyfish species and they are found all over the world…ranging from surface waters to the deep sea.  They have existed for at least 500,000,000 years!

We remember avoiding a couple of beaches in Australia because of Box Jellyfish, one of the most dangerous species.  They have stinging cells that they use to subdue their prey.  However thousands of swimmers are stung every year.  Effects range from mild discomfort to death.  Jellyfish can also form vast swarms…responsible for damage to fishing nets and clogging cooling systems of power and desalination plants

One more jellyfish.  This one is specifically called the Japanese Sea Nettle.  If you’ve ever touched a nettle (plant), you know that it hurts and stays with you for a while.  Well, this sea nettle is much worse as its sting is strong and it can be quite dangerous to humans…

These are Giant Japanese Spider Crabs.  These are the largest known species of crab and they may live up to 100 years.  How big can they get?  They can have a 15 inch body with a 15 foot leg span!  To better hide on the ocean floor, these crabs will adorn their shell with sponges and other animals.

This reef photo demonstrates just how colorful this living environment can be… Coral reefs provides shelter and food for millions of species.  Roughly 1,000 reef-building coral species exist but they host 35,000 to 60,000 other reef dwelling species… However, its felt that scientists have just scratched the surface as the best guess is that somewhere between 1 and 9 million different species live in these reefs.

Finally, a couple of other fairly clear photos of fish in the saltwater aquariums!  These conspicuous tropical Butterfly fish come in roughly 129 varieties and they are primarily found on reefs of the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans.

 

For defense, butterfly fish tend to be small so they can hide in the cracks and crevasses in reefs.  In addition, many, like the first one above, have dark bands across their eyes as well as eye-like dots on their flanks.  These markings may confuse predators as to which end of these fish they should attack.  Predators strike at the ‘head and eyes’ which is actually the tail of the fleeing fish…  Also, at night, the butterfish’s bright colors fade to blend in with the reef’s hiding spots.

This is a Panther Chameleon… They are another animal from the island nation of Madagascar, this time from the northeast section of the island.  This chameleon makes those paint selling chameleons on TV look like plain old dowdy dowagers.  However, on the island, color variations are all over the place and much depends on their local environment. 

Note:

·       Panther chameleons have tongues that are sometimes longer then their own body length and they can extend it toward their prey at the rate of about 26 body length per second, hitting their prey in 3 one-thousands of a second!  The tip of its tongue is like a sticky suction cup…

Here is just a bit more color to show some of the variety and life in the ocean.  These colorful creatures are all sea anemone.  This is a group of marine predatory animals that are named after the colorful flowering plant, also called anemones.  

These animals, which are related to jellyfish, have tentacles that can be extended to catch passing prey and then withdrawn to pull the prey into their body cavity for digestion.  The tentacles are armed with stinging cells which contain neurotoxins that are used to paralyze its prey.  There are over 1,000 known species of sea anemone around the world!

Note:

·       Remember the movie “Finding Nemo”?  Dory, a Clownfish, was the heroine.  Clownfish actually live among the tentacles of sea anemone and are not affected by their venom.

One more, nice photo of Avery…this time sitting in one of the big ocean aquarium’s window wells.  This was our last adventure on this visit with Avery with her grandparents Bonnie and Bill. 

Avery was an excellent house guest and wasn’t totally focused on her phone…computer games, etc.  She even looked out the window during our drives to see what she could see.  The only problem I found with this 11 year old was that she introduced me to Pyramid Solitaire.  I not only have been hooked on this game, but after a couple of hundred games, I’ve only beaten her high score twice…and she only played 6 or 7 games!  

As for the Tennessee Aquarium, it is a first class non-profit operation.  All of the exhibits are well designed for viewers and everything was well maintained.  The Aquarium is open from 10 AM until 6 PM daily except for Thanksgiving and Christmas Day.  Its located at One Broad Street in Chattanooga Tennessee.  Phone: 800-262-0695.  The Aquarium's website is at https://www.tnaqua.org/.

That’s all for now… Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them.

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave