I got the highlight of my Christmas travels yesterday when I drove
from my sister-in-law's house in Rome, Ga., up to Chattanooga, TN to
dive at the Tennessee Aquarium, on the banks of the Tennessee River.

The first thing that strikes any visitor from Baltimore is a feeling
of familiarity. The Tenn. Aquarium was designed by the same guy who
designed the National Aquarium In Baltimore, and it has been the
anchor attraction for a revitalization of the city waterfront that
includes a visitors center, an IMAX theatre and a host of good
restaurants. And the exterior of the aquarium is dominated by the same
glass pyramids we're so familiar with.

The interior is similar, too, even though the habitats are different.
The theme of the main, original  building, is River Journey, and the
exhibits take you from mountain streams in the Smokies to offshore
habitats in the Gulf of Mexico. You trace the water movement going
down a ramp through the exhibits, with frequent side trips to see
smaller tanks and animals. In the basement is  space for traveling
exhibits, and the current one is the seahorse exhibit we had in
Baltimore a few years ago.

I dove yesterday in the Lake Nickajack and the Gulf of Mexico
exhibits. Lake Nickajack simulates an upcountry reservoir. It's full
of sturgeon, catfish, paddlefish, striped bass, bream, crappies. That
was a feeding dive, and it was a blast. They gave me a canister full
of smelt and clams and posted me by a boulder on a ledge. Behind me
was an inlet pipe. My job was to pull out the smelt one at a time,
pinch them to release the gas so they wouldn't float and toss them
into the inlet stream, where they would tumble out and get nabbed by
the residents. There is a huge blue catfish named Snowflake, maybe 75
pounds, that just sat out in the stream and opened its mouth, which
was large enough to catch most of the smelt coming his way. He would
not move more than 6" to catch a fish. He didn't get that big by
wasting a lot of energy catching his food.

The sturgeon were also cool. They reminded me a lot of our cownose
rays, crawling over me, sucking on my hood or my arms, trying to swim
between me and my regulator hose. I fed them by hand, just like the
rays. Their mouths extend 3 or 4 inches to grab the food, and they
like to have their tummies rubbed, too.

Water temp was low 70s, so I wore a 5-mill in there. In the afternoon,
we dove in the Gulf of Mexico exhibit, where it was 81, so I was glad
I brought my 3-mill, too. The Gulf exhibit is pretty small, and we
just did a cleaning dive there. They alternate cleaning and feeding in
each tank each day. The Gulf exhibit has some permit and a very big
old amberjack, a couple of blind morays and a green turtle named Oscar
(!) that was hit by a propellor and lost most of his rear end -- no
tail or rear flippers at all.  It goes everywhere head down and likes
to stick its head under rocks and hold still, which makes all the
visitors think he's dead, especially when the triggerfish start
nipping at him.

I toured behind the scenes in the new exhibit building centered on a
coral reef (Texas Flower Gardens) that's very cool. They dive in
there, but only to clean and talk to the public. They feed at
different levels in the exhibit using pneumatic tubes. The reef
exhibit has sandbar and sand tiger sharks and all the other  usual
suspects.

Diving at other aquariums is one of the perks of my volunteer position
at NAIB. I dove  in the kelp forest of the Monterey Bay Aquarium last
August, and now, whenever I travel, I'll look to see if there's an
aquarium nearby. Bubbles is bubbles, ya know.

Hope everyone has a great New Year (and I'm not talking about Monday
night, I'm talking about the 366 days of 2008) with lots of the kind
of diving you like to do.

gc