Friendly Fishermen

Originally published in the Knoxville News Sentinel as part of my bi-weekly column Odd Jobs.

After the storm that swept through East Tennessee on June 21, causing the largest power loss in KUB history, Patrick Rakes, like many, had a lot on his mind. It was very important that his nonprofit business, Conservation Fisheries Inc., still had power. In fact, it was so important that the building has an alarm rigged to warn him with a phone call if it happens. Despite the massive outages, he hadn't received that call.

Worried that something might be wrong, Rakes decided to go see for himself. As he drove by, he could see the office and loading dock lights glowing from the street. He drove on satisfied. However, in the back warehouse room filled with rows of aquariums stacked to the rafters, the power was out. No power meant the water temperatures were rising, the oxygenators had stopped, the water did not flow and some of the world's rarest fish were slowly headed toward trouble.

Rakes met his business partner, J.R. Shute, in 1982. They breed rare North American freshwater fish, but these fish don't end up in a dentist's aquarium. These fish are released into the wild to repopulate species that have seen their numbers decimated by habituate destruction, pollution and, in at least one case, poisoning.

"We have to keep it as cool as we can this time of year," says Shute as he walks through aisles of fish tanks and plastic tubes stacked one on top of the other a few weeks before the power outages. "Water temperature in here is still pretty cool. Right under 70. In the winter time it is downright miserable cold because we just have to let these guys get cold."

The warehouse room's temperature not only follows the natural flow of the seasons but also cycles daily. The lights too are rigged to an astronomical timer to match the outside day length. Mimicking the seasons lets the fish know when it is time to mate.

The tanks are filled with fish with names like Spotfin Chubs, Redline Darters, Yellowfin Madtoms and Conasauga Logpearchs, the second rarest fish they have after the Diamond Darter.

"In this tank right here," says Shute, stopping to look through the glass sides of a tank, "there are probably more Conasauga Logpearches than have ever been seen."

These Logpearches are rare because they only live in a 30 mile stretch of the Conasauga River in Southeast Tennessee and North Georgia. The company did not have any luck spawning them until this year. Now they have more of the fish than they intended, and there is a good chance that there are more in CFI's tanks than are living in the wild. At least until this fall when Shute says they plan to release the fish.

All told the company usually as twenty-five different species of fish in its tanks at any one time, and over the years has worked with more than 60 species.

"As for the total number of individual fish," says Shurte. "Boy, I would be hard pressed to even venture a guess right now."

Their funding usually comes from grants from state agencies all over the south. As part of the 1973 Endangered Species Act the federal government allocates funds to the states for the protection of endangered species, but it wasn't until more than a decade later that those funds were used in Tennessee to not only protect but also repopulate some species of fish.

For Shute and Rakes it all started in 1985 when the TWRA, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the University of Tennessee decided to propagate two rare Madtoms that used to be native to Abrams Creek in Cades Cove before they were poisoned out in 1957 to create a trophy trout fishery.

The fish were later discovered in Citico Creek, but their numbers were not high enough to allow for the direct transfer of adults back to Abrams.

"So they asked us, because we were aquarists, to see if we could propagate them in captivity," says Rakes.

That first contract, which went through the university because they were not in business for themselves yet, was for close to $2,000.

"We thought it would be easy," laughs Shute.

Now, 26 years later, they are still working for the state with those two original fish. Only now the contract is for a total of seven fish all over the state and is worth $60,000.

They incorporated their business in 1993, but it wasn't until the early 2000's that the business had grown enough for them to work at it full time.

"We are doing alright now," says Rakes, "but we couldn't have gotten to this point if we both had not had wives who had real jobs and insurance and things. It is the reason we are the only ones doing it. No one else could. You would have to ? be independently wealthy to do it (our way) now."

In a year they probably have around 30 different contracts, 60 reports and work regularly in every state that boarders Tennessee, says Rakes.

If the situation is bad enough they keep "Ark Populations" of fish without any contract for fear it will soon disappear from the wild.

But, even though they have succeeded in propagating fish on the verge of extinction, they are really nothing more than a Band-Aid, says Shute.

"Unless the habitat is there this doesn't do any good at all. So we work in conjunction with areas that are either cleaned up or have potential to be cleaned up," he says.

The power outage was discovered the next day, but there wasn't much they could do beside call KUB. By the Friday after the Tuesday night storm, power was still only getting to half the building. One outlet would work, but the one next to it wouldn't. By then the water temperature in the tanks was getting close to 80 degrees, much hotter than is natural.

The high temperatures could not only cause harm to the fish, but the hotter the water the less oxygen it holds. Luckily, a gas generator they hooked up to an air conditioner and cranked to high managed to get the water temperature down to 74 degrees.

In the end they didn't experience any unusual loses. The only real damage was to a population of larval stage Madtoms, but even though the die-off was higher than usual, it wasn't clear if the heat caused it, says Melissa Petty, a senior field biologist and data manager at the company.

Then, Friday evening, the power finally came back on.