Ten girls poked through leaves, searching for tiny critters hiding in a temporary habitat in bins on tables in a lab at the Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institute.
It was just the latest trip for the freshmen students involved with a partnership between the Chattanooga Girls Leadership Academy and Tennessee American Water designed to show girls different career opportunities.
Ten of the top freshmen, who were selected for the program due to their attitudes in school and work ethic, looked closely at what first just seemed like a pile of leaves in a plastic bin. As they looked closer, they saw what they were searching for: benthic macroinvertebrates. With the help of biologists, they had learned that meant small animals without spines living among stones, logs, sediments and aquatic plants at the bottom of the Tennessee River and its creeks and streams.
“Oh my God, there’s three of them right there,” a student excitedly said as the girls hunched over desks in the institute’s flex lab.
They studied the barely visible creatures through lenses and used information sheets to identify the different types of critters. They examined shapes and features – “this one has tiny legs,” one student observed. They looked through their chart and narrowed it down to either the sow bug or a similar-looking scud.