The Tennessee Aquarium is venturing to new waters.
After years of brainstorming, fundraising and planning, officials from the aquarium will publicly unveil plans today for a $4.5 million structure on the Baylor School campus that will house the Tennessee Aquarium Freshwater Conservation Institute.
It’s a bold step forward for the aquarium, which has long served a role in organizing freshwater conservation efforts in the Southeast – one of the most biologically diverse areas in the world.
Now it will have a facility dedicated to that task, a place aquarium officials believe will vault their work to the national stage and reinforce their assertion that Chattanooga is the conservation capital of the South.
Tennessee Aquarium employees Mary Klinghard, Rachel Powell, and Josh Ennen, from left, release Lake Sturgeons into the Tennessee River on Friday morning. The fish are surgically implanted with sonic tags that allow researchers to track their movements.“We’ve been putting this together so we can truly take this conservation institute to the next level,” Tennessee Aquarium president Charlie Arant told the Times Free Press editorial board last week. “And I mean dramatically improve what we’re able to do, how we’re able to do it and the kind of leadership and collaboration we are able to provide.”