Whether it's dreams of feeding sharks, corralling seahorses or culturing jellyfish, many visitors to aquariums wonder what it's like to work at a zoological institution or ... more particularly ... how to get a job there themselves.

In this episode Casey is joined in the Studio Dive Cage by a pair of Aquarium coworkers, one relatively new and one with more than 25 years under her belt, and a special guest from the Chattanooga Zoo.

Together, they tackle the highs and lows or what working with animals is like, whether they're directly involved or "animal adjacent." They also offer up some tested tips for how to make yourself a more appealing candidate to join the team.

Want to see what working at an aquarium is like, from an employee's perspective? Check out the Aquarium's Fish Person Point of View series, including cleaning and feeding Penguins' Rock, making lunch for Lemur Forest and tending to a "garden" of anemones.

Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjkmEccUchZbf2BYFLw0QDOL3_uzkkMnp

Episode Cast

• Casey Phillips, host and senior communications specialist
• Brenda Salgado, aquarist II
• Loribeth Lee, assistant curator of forests
• Amanda Eckhart, animal care supervisor (Chattanooga Zoo)

The Podcast Aquatic is made possible by support from The Tennessee Conservationist, the official magazine of Tennessee State Parks.Printed sustainably on 100% post-consumer recycled paper with UV ink, each issue is filled with fascinating stories about Tennessee’s native species, rich history, and unique culture. It’s also your guide to exploring state parks and planning your next outdoor adventure.

Become a Tennessee Conservationist and subscribe at ⁠tnconservationist.org⁠.

A Species Survival Plan (SSP) is a behind-the-scenes tool employed by zoos and aquariums to manage and promote the health of the entire population of a species in human care. By tracking genetics and making strategic decisions about where to move individuals in the interest of forming healthy breeding pairs, SSPs make top-down decisions in the interest of an entire species’ well-being.

At the same time, however, SSP decision can be a bittersweet pill to swallow for the devoted caretakers who form bonds, often deep ones, with the animals with which they work. Some day, those animals could be sent to another facility by an SSP decision, a move which can tug on a caretaker's heartstrings, even if that sadness is blunted by the knowledge that a relocation is being called for in the interest of making the entire population more robust.

Want to see how a recent SSP-prompted move helped provide much needed companionship for the Aquarium's lonely male Red-collared Brown Lemur? Check out this video to meet Kintana, a female Red-collared Brown who recently relocated to the Aquarium from the Dallas Zoo thanks to the species' SSP.

Episode Cast

• ​Casey Phillips, senior communications specialist, host and SSP novice
• ​Bill Hughes, herpetology collection coordinator
• ​Loribeth Lee, assistant curator of forests
• ​Maggie Sipe, lead animal care specialist (Ocean Journey)

The Podcast Aquatic is made possible by support from The Tennessee Conservationist, the official magazine of Tennessee State Parks.
Printed sustainably on 100% post-consumer recycled paper with UV ink, each issue is filled with fascinating stories about Tennessee’s native species, rich history, and unique culture. It’s also your guide to exploring state parks and planning your next outdoor adventure.

Become a Tennessee Conservationist and subscribe at tnconservationist.org.

Join other conservation enthusiasts and follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

Just in time for the summer travel season, this episode is a listener special, featuring answers to our fans' most-burning questions about our penguins, lemurs and river otters!

To check in live with our penguins and otters, check out the Aquarium's always-streaming web cams:

• River Otter Falls
• Penguins' Rock

Episode Cast

• Casey Phillips, show host and fellow otters/lemur/penguin stan
• Sam Grote, senior animal care specialist
• Tyler Schneider, senior animal care specialist
• Holly Gibson, senior animal care specialist

The Podcast Aquatic is made possible by support from The Tennessee Conservationist, the official magazine of Tennessee State Parks.Printed sustainably on 100% post-consumer recycled paper with UV ink, each issue is filled with fascinating stories about Tennessee’s native species, rich history, and unique culture. It’s also your guide to exploring state parks and planning your next outdoor adventure.

Become a Tennessee Conservationist and subscribe at ⁠⁠tnconservationist.org⁠⁠.

They come in all shapes and sizes, but aquatic macroinvertebrates represent an important component of the food webs in streams. Whether its damselfly nymphs, crayfish or web-spinning caddisflies, these spineless organisms are a fascinating group of animals that are easy to overlook in favor of larger, more traditionally charismatic animals like fish, salamanders and aquatic mammals.

In this episode, we plunge into the oft-overlooked world of "water bugs," from where they live and why they matter to some of our favorites to meet while working in the streams of Southern Appalachia.

Learn more about Freshwaters Illustrated's film Hidden Rivers at https://www.freshwatersillustrated.org/hidden-rivers https://www.freshwatersillustrated.org/hidden-rivers

Episode Cast

• ​Casey Phillips, host and terrestrial vertebrate
• ​Rose Segbers, senior entomologist
• ​Cody Beavers, aquarist II
• ​Helaina Gomez, watershed conservation coordinator

The Podcast Aquatic is made possible by support from The Tennessee Conservationist, the official magazine of Tennessee State Parks.Printed sustainably on 100% post-consumer recycled paper with UV ink, each issue is filled with fascinating stories about Tennessee’s native species, rich history, and unique culture. It’s also your guide to exploring state parks and planning your next outdoor adventure.

Become a Tennessee Conservationist and subscribe at ⁠⁠tnconservationist.org⁠⁠.

Plastic pollution is a beachside menace on shorelines all over our planet. With a literal garbage truck worth of this manufactured waste entering the ocean every minute, this can seem like problem with no end much less a solution.

Fifteen years ago, Oregon-based artistic collective, Washed Ashore, found a more productive way to reuse plastic trash recovered from its coastline. By feeding this erstwhile waste into the hands of talented artists, Washed Ashore gives it new life as the skin, scale, fur and feathers of animals at scales that mirror plastic's impact on aquatic ecosystems the world over.

In this episode, we chat with Brad Parks, Washed Ashore's conservation and education director, about how these amazing sculptures are created, how he hopes they're received by the public and what animals he's still waiting to see rendered as plasticized art.

Episode Cast

• Casey Phillips, host and reluctantly frequent user of plastic products
• Brad Parks, conservation/education director of Washed Ashore

The Podcast Aquatic is made possible by support from The Tennessee Conservationist, the official magazine of Tennessee State Parks.Printed sustainably on 100% post-consumer recycled paper with UV ink, each issue is filled with fascinating stories about Tennessee’s native species, rich history, and unique culture. It’s also your guide to exploring state parks and planning your next outdoor adventure.

Become a Tennessee Conservationist and subscribe at ⁠⁠tnconservationist.org⁠⁠.

Like anything humans try to do beneath the surface, underwater filmmaking poses a slew of challenges beyond those of terrestrial videography. Few people understand that as well as Tim Geers, who has decades of experience filming aquatic productions bound for the largest of screens and the smallest.

In addition to more than 20 years contributing to the Emmy Award-nominated web series, Jonathan Bird's Blue World, Geers also served as second unit director on the giant-screen film, Call of the Dolphins 3D.

In this episode, Geers joins host Casey Phillips in the studio dive cage to discuss why dolphin behavior endears them to humans, his philosophy about teaching the next generation of filmmakers and how his life goals align with those of a famous figure in the sci-fi epic Blade Runner.

Episode Cast

• Casey Phillips, host and fan of Jonathan Bird's Blue World
• Tim Geers, underwater cinematographer

The Podcast Aquatic is made possible by support from The Tennessee Conservationist, the official magazine of Tennessee State Parks.Printed sustainably on 100% post-consumer recycled paper with UV ink, each issue is filled with fascinating stories about Tennessee’s native species, rich history, and unique culture. It’s also your guide to exploring state parks and planning your next outdoor adventure.

Become a Tennessee Conservationist and subscribe at ⁠⁠tnconservationist.org⁠⁠.

Considering it's one of the building blocks of life, it's ironic how dangerous water can be to the ill-equipped. And when it comes to deep water, humans are about as under-prepared for survival as it's possible to be.

Fortunately, despite our pitiful lung capacity and lack of fins, we're blessed with a heap of curiosity and ingenuity, which has given rise over the millennia to a variety of methods to explore beneath the surface. Absent a submarine in your backyard, the most accessible means of spending time underwater is the self-contained underwater breathing apparatus (aka SCUBA).

Here at the Aquarium, we dive all the time, whether it's to clean or enact repairs to our massive exhibits, to feed the animals or just to engage with the public. On this episode of the podcast, two of our senior dive specialist join one of our newest certified staff divers to explain what it's like experiencing the Aquarium from the other side of the acrylic and why it's worth all the work to earn your fins.

Episode cast

Casey Phillips, senior communications specialist, host-captain and certified landlubber Mark Craven, manager of dive operations and dive safety officer Chris Tucker, assistant dive safety officer Doug Strickland, communications content creator II

Want to dive with us?

Learn more about how to become a volunteer diver and apply at: ⁠https://tnaqua.org/volunteer/scuba-diver/

The Podcast Aquatic is made possible by support from The Tennessee Conservationist, the official magazine of Tennessee State Parks.Printed sustainably on 100% post-consumer recycled paper with UV ink, each issue is filled with fascinating stories about Tennessee’s native species, rich history, and unique culture. It’s also your guide to exploring state parks and planning your next outdoor adventure.

Become a Tennessee Conservationist and subscribe at ⁠⁠tnconservationist.org⁠⁠.

The world's smallest sturgeon species, the Syr Darya Shovelnose Sturgeon, is found in muddy rivers flowing through Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and other parts of Central Asia. It tops out at a diminutive 9 inches long.

But the thing is, it hasn't been seen in more than 60 years.

In this episode of the podcast, two of our scientists, Dr. Bernie Kuhajda and Dr. Dave Neely, and graduate student Christian Swartzbaugh discuss a recent trip they made to Uzbekistan as part of the Search for Lost Species. Their quest? To ascertain whether the Syr Darya Shovelnose Sturgeon is still around or if it has gone extinct.

From clandestine show-and-tells of preserved specimens in back alleys to adhesive catfish to self-destructing dirty diapers, this one's got it all.

Episode Cast

• Casey Phillips, senior communications specialist, host and sturgeon stan
• Dr. Bernie Kuhajda, aquatic conservation biologist
• Dr. Dave Neely, adjunct scientist
• Christian Swartzbaugh, graduate student, University of Georgia

The Podcast Aquatic is made possible by support from The Tennessee Conservationist, the official magazine of Tennessee State Parks.Printed sustainably on 100% post-consumer recycled paper with UV ink, each issue is filled with fascinating stories about Tennessee’s native species, rich history, and unique culture. It’s also your guide to exploring state parks and planning your next outdoor adventure.

Become a Tennessee Conservationist and subscribe at ⁠⁠tnconservationist.org⁠⁠.