Tennessee Aquarium

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Tennessee Aquarium


Date opened	May 1, 1992 ^[1]
Location	Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA
Number of Animals	12,000 ^[2]
Accreditations/ Memberships	AZA
Website

The Tennessee Aquarium, located in Chattanooga, Tennessee, is the second largest (next to the Georgia Aquarium) freshwater aquarium in the world^{[citation needed]}.

The Tennessee Aquarium's River Journey and Ocean Journey buildings are home to more than 12,000 animals including fish, reptiles, amphibians, invertebrates, birds penguins, butterflies and more. The original River Journey facility is organized around the theme of the Story of the River, following the path of a raindrop from high in the Appalachian Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico. Approximately 2/3 of the facility's display follows this theme, with the rest devoted to smaller aquatic exhibits hosting organisms from around the world. The self-guided tour takes visitors through three living forest exhibits that teem with life above and below the water’s surface. Along the way, visitors see thousands of animals like free-flying song birds, snapping turtles, sandbar and sand tiger sharks, stingrays, river otters, moray eels and colorful reef fish.

The new facility, opened in April 2005, ostensibly follows the theme of an Ocean Journey, though with much less consistency than the original. However this facility does include more hands on displays, such as a large shark tank and ray touch tank, large macaws, a butterfly garden with South American species on constant display, as well as the very large ocean tank itself. Other visitor favorites include the Boneless Beauties gallery, where guests enjoy invertebrates like jellyfish, cuttlefish, giant Pacific octopi and Japanese spider crabs. An even newer 16,000 gallon penguin exhibit, with ten macaroni and ten gentoo penguins. It opened May 3, 2007.

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Many restaurants, ranging in price from fast-food to moderately expensive lie within easy walking distance of the Aquarium facility. The city's Coolidge park is just north of the Aquarium across the river, about 1/2 mile by foot using Tennessee's Walnut Street Bridge, and offers families an inexpensive place to tour and eat lunch. At the south end of the Walnut Street bridge there is an adjacent glass walking bridge, leading east to the Hunter Art Gallery. A block south of the Aquarium is Carmike's Bijou 7 theater, with the latest movies. The Chattanooga IMAX is just across the street from the Carmike theater, with a single screen serving up educational or family IMAX movies. One block over from the IMAX is the Creative Discovery Museum, an interactive children's museum based around science and arts. And, immediately north of the Aquarium, along the southern bank of the Tennessee River, is the beginning of the Chattanooga River Walk, which now extends continuously all the way to the Chickamauga Dam, over 10 miles away.

The Tennessee Aquarium organization also prides itself on its involvement in propagation, conservation and education efforts concerning endangered and threatened creatures and habitats like lake sturgeon, turtles and the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary. Some revenue from ticket sales supports various education, research and conservation programs.