“You go first,” 11-year-old Gage Payne said to classmate Cameron Wright, urging his friend to touch a 3-foot, slippery fossil-looking lake sturgeon.
The boys, a bit reluctant to touch the large, bony and flapping fish, were among 45 fifth-graders from Calvin Donaldson Environmental Science Academy taking part in a downtown Chattanooga release at Coolidge Park.
“This is the first time we’ve released sturgeon in downtown Chattanooga,” said Dr. Anna George, director of the Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institute.
Lake sturgeon, a prehistoric and endangered fish, once were common in the Tennessee River, but they hadn’t been seen in 652-mile waterway for 40 years before the institute and state wildlife officials began reintroducing them a decade ago.