Tennessee Aquarium set to celebrate 25th anniversary of the Lake Sturgeon reintroduction program

2024 Sturgeon Release | Courtesy: Doug Strickland / Tennessee Aquarium

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (WDEF) — This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Tennessee Aquarium’s Lake Sturgeon reintroduction program, and a public release is scheduled to happen Thursday, October 23.

Since the year 2000, the Tennessee Aquarium and its partners with the Southeast Lake Sturgeon Working Group have raised and released a whopping 430,000 state-threatened Lake Sturgeon into the Tennessee River and Cumberland River watersheds.

This is all in an effort to restore this ancient fish to its native waterways.

To celebrate the 25th anniversary, a public release will be held October 23 at 12 p.m. into the Tennessee River in downtown Chattanooga at Coolidge Park, 100 River Street.

News of a significant development in the restoration effort is also planned to be announced.

About 500 juvenile Lake Sturgeon are set to be released, all having hatched from eggs collected from wild-spawning Lake Sturgeon in Wisconsin, where the species remains abundant.

The juveniles were raised over the summer at the Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institute’s (TNACI) freshwater field station.

Freshwater scientists from TNACI will be joined by 30 Hixson High School students, along with community leaders for the release.

The species disappeared from Tennessee due to a combination of overfishing, poor water quality and damming practices.

The last wild-born Lake Sturgeon found in the Tennessee Rivers was in 1963.

The Tennessee Aquarium is one of the founding members of the Southeast Lake Sturgeon Working Group, which was formed in 1998 to establish a self-sustaining population of Lake Sturgeon into the river system.