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snowleopard

Tennessee River Gallery

August 5th, 2010.

Tennessee River Gallery
snowleopard, 24 Sep 2010
    • snowleopard
      August 5th, 2010.
    • geomorph
      This aquarium is clearly the number 1 on my 'must-see' list that I have not visited in the US. The freshwater focus of most of the facility is relatively unique for a major aquarium, and the presentation looks slick and modern and sophisticated throughout. Thank you for posting such a clear and complete gallery of the exhibits and facility, including the floorplans!
    • KCZooFan
      Are those pacu???
    • snowleopard
      You are welcome! The aquarium is fantastic, and I'm glad that you enjoyed the photos of the floor plans as they are quite informative. Just in case anyone wishes to read it, here is the full review from my summer 2010 road trip of 39 zoos/aquariums in 46 days:

      DAY 25, Part I: Thursday, August 5th

      For the second time on this trip we ticked off two animal attractions in a single day, as earlier there was the National Aquarium in Baltimore and the fairly small Maryland Zoo only minutes away. Today we spent 2.5 hours at Tennessee Aquarium and then after a very short drive we toured the Chattanooga Zoo for two hours. This review can be considered Part I.

      Zoo/Aquarium Review # 21: Tennessee Aquarium

      Tennessee Aquarium’s website:

      Tennessee Aquarium | Chattanooga Attractions | IMAX Movies | TN Riverboat Tours

      Aquarium Map (only of the exterior campus):

      http://www.tnaqua.org/Libraries/PDF_..._Map.sflb.ashx

      Tennessee Aquarium is an excellent facility, and it is regarded as one of the best aquariums in North America. It opened in 1992 and I believe that it is still the largest freshwater aquarium on the planet. An interesting layout means that there are two buildings that are not actually connected, meaning that once visitors have their tickets they can enter and exit either building as many times as they wish during a day. “River Journey” is the larger and more impressive of the structures, and that building was the original aquarium that opened in 1992. “Ocean Journey” is still excellent, and that second building was added in 2005, including a penguin exhibit that opened in 2007.

      Since the entire aquarium is excellent I’ll just briefly review each building:

      “RIVER JOURNEY”:

      This building is 130,000 square feet, is the height of a 12-story building, and holds 400,000 gallons of water. It cost $45 million back in 1992.

      The entire bottom floor’s exhibits are devoted to a startlingly extensive collection of “Seahorses”, and there are dwarf seahorses, pot-bellied seahorses, lined seahorses and many other species, as well as weedy sea dragons and leafy sea dragons which are closely related to seahorses.

      The second floor’s first gallery is called “Appalachian Cove Forest” and it has a walk-through woodland area with a tiny river otter pool (too small but with underwater viewing), a large pond with many varieties of trout, some snake terrariums (black rat snake, northern copperhead, northern pine snake, timber rattlesnake), a crashing waterfall and some other smaller tanks. Overall this area is gorgeous but lacking in animal life.

      Another gallery of the aquarium is called “Mississippi Delta” and it is outstanding. There is a huge alligator/alligator snapping turtle exhibit (with 3 of the beasts and towering trees), as well as a smaller tank with about 6 all-male juvenile gators. A large mixed-species exhibit for snakes (including an albino eastern diamondback rattlesnake) and a massive turtle pond are both very well designed, and the turtle pool is crawling with at least 4-6 species. There are Gulf of Mexico and Mangrove tanks that await visitors near the revolving doors.

      The “Rivers of the World” gallery is fantastic, with a wide hallway and large, scenic tanks alongside both walls. This area was one of the highlights of the entire aquarium. Some of the exhibits: Zaire River, Amazon River (two different exhibits), Asian Rivers, Volga River, Fly River, Chinese Mountain Stream, St. Lawrence River, Madagascar Rivers, Nishikigoi.

      Another gallery called “Tennessee River Gallery” has an enormous tank called “Nickajack Lake”, another large tank called “Reelfoot Lake” and smaller terrariums and tanks of salamanders, “Backwaters”, “Tennessee River”, another juvenile alligator tank, a huge turtle display with at least a dozen species, an alligator snapping turtle tank and “Darters”.

      “OCEAN JOURNEY”:

      This building is 60,000 square feet, is the height of a 10-story building, and holds 700,000 gallons of water. It cost $30 million back in 2005.

      After traversing a double set of escalators visitors are transported into “Tropical Cove”, which contains a small pool for freshwater stingrays, a hyacinth macaw display, a pretty walk-through butterfly garden and a large touch tank with these species: Atlantic stingray, cownose ray, southern stingray, Atlantic guitarfish, epaulette shark, white-spotted bamboo shark and brown-banded bamboo shark. Impressive list!

      Penguins are in a so-so exhibit called “Penguins’ Rock”, and the macaroni and gentoo species are exhibited here; there is a “Jellies: Living Art” display which I swear I’ve already seen at about 3 other aquariums; “Boneless Beauties” showcases cuttlefish and other sea creatures lacking bones; “Secret Reef” and “Undersea Cavern” are both immense and feature a tank that I was told makes up just over 500,000 of the building’s 700,000 gallons of water. Menacing sand tiger sharks (at least 4 of them) prowl the depths of a massive tank that is also packed with a large variety of other fish.

      OVERALL:

      Tennessee Aquarium draws just over one million visitors annually and much like the National Aquarium in Baltimore just a few days ago it is also one of the best aquariums that I’ve ever visited. It is intriguing to visit an aquarium where there is an emphasis on freshwater exhibits, and so in that way Tennessee has carved out a niche for itself. For me the “River Journey” building is almost flawless, with gallery after gallery of amazing exhibits. There isn’t always a strong attempt to create an immersive feeling at the aquarium, as there are many tanks that are simply set into the wall, but the quality and attention to detail is impressive.

      One major bonus to Tennessee is that the hallways and walking paths are WIDE, so that there is a huge amount of space within each room. My daughter Kylie, who is almost 11 months of age, was put down on the ground and she seemed to spend half the aquarium crawling around and making friends with fellow visitors. This was by far and away her favourite attraction of the entire road trip thus far, as at almost every tank she would go crazy whenever a turtle or similarly-sized creature would appear, and thanks to the large amount of space we just let her crawl around at her leisure. Most aquariums, even during the week, are packed shoulder-to-shoulder along narrow walking trails.

      I have not visited nearly as many aquariums as I have zoos in North America, and so I am missing some significant facilities across the continent. I hope to tour Dallas World Aquarium on this road trip, but until then here are my 8 favourite aquariums in North America.

      #1 - Shedd
      #2 - Georgia
      #3 - Monterey Bay
      #4 - Baltimore
      #5 - Tennessee
      #6 - Vancouver
      #7 - Oregon Coast
      #8 – Seattle
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  • Category:
    Tennessee Aquarium
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    snowleopard
    Date:
    24 Sep 2010
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