New Fish Discovered In Middle Tennessee

NASHVILLE, TN -- There's a new fish in the Tennessee River valley.

Tennessee Valley Authority aquatic biologist Jeff Simmons, along with colleagues from Yale University and the University of Tennessee announced the identification of a new species of logperch in the October edition of the Bulletin of the Peabody Museum of Natural History. Though the fish - known commonly as Tennessee logperch and officially as Percina apina - had been recognized since the 1970s, for decades it was assumed to simply be another population of the blotchside logperch, but diligent study indicated enough differences - genetically, as well as in the size and arrangement of the eponymous blotches - to declare it a species all its own.

The Tennessee logperch lives in the Duck River and its tributaries and Simmons said the tiny fish is "finicky."

“It’s a sensitive fish that uses its snout to flip small stones on the creek bed to feed on caddisflies and other sensitive aquatic insects. It’s a sight feeder, too. It couldn’t exist in muddy water, or polluted water or streams where excess sediments covered the creek bed, smothering the insects that the fish eat," he said in a press release.

And that's good news. The little fellow requires crystal clear water. While its population is small and contained, it's not endangered, because its home streams are staying clean. That need for clean water, in fact, gave the logperch its species name. "Apina" comes from the Greek adjective for "clean" or "without dirt."

The logperch, interestingly enough, is a cousin to the snail darter, a similarly tiny fish that hamstrung and delayed the completion of the TVA's Tellico Dam on the Little Tennessee River in East Tennessee. Eventually, Sen. Howard Baker - who called the snail darter "the awful beast is back, the bane of my existence, the nemesis of my golden years, the bold perverter of the Endangered Species Act" - sponsored a bill exempting Tellico Dam from the Endangered Species Act and Tellico Dam was completed in 1979. Snail darters were relocated to the Hiwassee River and eventually reclassified from endangered to threatened.

Photo via TVA