AQUARIUM Glassy, classy, wet and wild

Visitors can even watch divers feed the fish.
By CATHY SECKMAN
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. -- The first and largest freshwater aquarium in the world, Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, holds almost half a million gallons of water and takes up 130,000 square feet in a 12-story building.
Twenty-five exhibit areas hold 9,000 living specimens representing 350 species of fish, birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians. Four hundred volunteers act as divers and docents to serve the one million visitors per year who come to the private nonprofit educational complex.
Impressed? It's hard not to be. Walking toward the glittering trapezoid, you can't help but wonder how all of that is contained behind simple panes of glass. It is, that's all. We can enjoy it without understanding how it's built.
What it's like
Inside the aquarium, visitors traverse curving ramps and staircases from level to level. A single tank might have half a dozen access points where visitors can get up close and personal with underwater life. At one point are bottom-dwelling catfish. Climb a ramp to see river trout swimming in schools in the same tank. Higher yet, there are snapping turtles sunning themselves at the surface. Finally, at top level, small songbirds flit through the greenery above the water.
Most of the exhibits concentrate on river life, from Amazonian piranha to Mississippi paddlefish, but there's plenty of sea life as well. The sea horse exhibit, opened two years ago in a new gallery, includes everything from dwarf sea horses to giant seadragons that look for all the world like leafy branches floating through the water.
Feeding time
Visitors are occasionally surprised to look into a tank and see scuba divers paddling slowly, feeding the fish that crowd around them. Above them, attached by lifelines, is a rowboat that floats atop the water. As the divers work, stopping occasionally to wave at wide-eyed children outside the tank, a docent explains their work and asks and answers questions.
Not all of the tanks are large enough for boats and divers. A special doughnut-shaped tank that sits on stilts allows a child to crawl between the stilts and stand up in the middle of the tank to get a 360-degree view of the fish. Another circular tank has no top, so visitors can touch the lake sturgeon that swim endlessly around and around.
The aquarium complex also includes an IMAX 3D theater, ranked as one of the top five in the United States, an Environmental Learning Lab and the Tennessee Aquarium Research Institute.
Besides its recreational and educational value, the aquarium has been of inestimable economic value to Chattanooga. When it was built at Ross Landing on the city's waterfront, it anchored an economic revitalization nearing $1 billion.
More than 100 stores, restaurants and entertainment venues have opened within blocks of the aquarium.
What's near
Nearby attractions include the Creative Discovery Museum, a seven-screen cinema, the home of the Chattanooga Lookouts minor league baseball team, the Lookout Mountain Incline Railway, the International Towing Museum, the Chattanooga Regional History Museum, and a free electric shuttle that serves the entire city.
Near the 19th-century Walnut Street Bridge is an antique carousel, furnished with a new menagerie carved by students at Horsin' Around, Chattanooga's carousel animal carving school.
More museums, restaurants, shops and bed-and-breakfast establishments round out the riverfront district, helping build Chattanooga's new reputation as a prime tourist destination for the eastern United States.