Southern Appalachian rivers are home to incredible fish. Meet snorkelers who hunt for them

There were four of us the first time I went out snorkeling in the Little River. We convened at a gas station in the hills above Maryville. While folks pumped gas or ate gas-station-diner food at shaded picnic tables, my two guides and I were sweating in wetsuits under the early summer sun.

Our fourth, a blue-haired guy on a cross-country fish photography expedition, was laden with equipment. We stood on a disused bridge over the river, planning our descent.

Before long we had made our way to the far bank and into the stream.

I wasn’t sure what to expect. I understood, academically, that East Tennessee’s rivers were a biodiversity hotspot, home to more species of freshwater fish than anywhere else in America. But I had never stuck my face in a river.

I was immediately greeted by shiners and darters. Stonerollers and suckers grazed on rockbound algae like cleaner fish at a pet store. What looked from the bridge like an empty, albeit clear, river was teeming with life.

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As I stumbled around in the current, getting my bearings, I saw a flash of orange downstream. A tangerine darter danced through the current effortlessly. It swam past us and around us unafraid, almost mocking our lack of coordination. This was the darter’s element, not ours.

Over the next few hours, I’d see dozens of fish species, many in the bright, iridescent colors of freshwater aquarium fish. It was mating season so even some of the dullest darters flashed brightly.  Schools of shiners and minnows followed me up stream, taking shelter from the current. Lumpy sculpin, utterly confident in their rocky camouflage, let us get within inches of their hiding places. A rainbow trout darted past us, a knife through the water.

For a certain kind of person, the teeming life makes the streams and creeks of East Tennessee a place of pilgrimage. People come from all over the United States to snorkel here.

For some it's just a hobby. For others, like my guides, it became a calling.

"A big part of river snorkeling for me is breaking up that mundane nature of modern life," one of my guides, Evan Poellinger, would later tell me. "This is an opportunity to get into the environment and expand your world. The next time you're driving past a creek wondering what's there, that's a little spark of excitement even if you don't spend every weekend in a river."

Clean water and public land

Before I went out, I had never met anyone who snorkeled rivers. The idea seemed sort of crazy to me, at least at first. Growing up in New England, the rivers were mostly cold and dangerous. The nearest local stream, the Chicopee River, was swift, heavily dammed and industrially polluted.

East Tennessee’s waterways don’t have a much better reputation. First, Second and Third creeks in Knoxville are posted with bacteriological warnings. The Emory and Clinch rivers are famous for coal ash contamination and the Tennessee River itself is among the most polluted by microplastics in the world.  

But river snorkelers don’t swim in places like that. They head out into the mountains to find rivers protected by national forests, Great Smoky Mountains National Park and state land. These waters are clean, clear and relatively safe. And above all, these waters hosted the most diverse array of freshwater fish species in the country.

Why are there so many fish species in East Tennessee?

Rivers are everywhere in East Tennessee. The hilly topography and consistent rain of the Southern Appalachians and Cumberland Plateau give rise to a dizzyingly complex network of streams and creeks. And in the rare times it doesn’t rain, the land itself can provide water. Springs seep through caves and fissures onto the surface like the land itself is sweating or bleeding.

The rivers and hills also are among the oldest on Earth. The Appalachians are ancient mountains, forming and reforming as continents drifted and pushed together. Three hundred million years ago the Appalachians were as high as the Himalayas and stretched across several continental masses along the equator. 

As they aged, the Appalachians lost their height but retained their complicated structure of folded ridges, valleys and streams. For the past million years, the Southern Appalachians have been largely undisturbed by major geologic events, allowing life to colonize and diversify.

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During the last Ice Age, the Southern Appalachians were untouched by the glaciers that covered North America. As glaciers expanded from the north, species fled southward, taking refuge in the ancient peaks and valleys. The Southern Appalachian rivers also, helpfully, drain southward, allowing fish species to escape to warmer climates. 

This history makes the Southern Appalachians a freshwater biodiversity hotspot. The lower French Broad River watershed is home to over 90 species of fish, some of which live nowhere else on Earth. In the Watts Bar Lake watershed, which encompasses most of Knoxville, Maryville, the Smokies and parts of Roane County, there are over 100 native fish species. The Tennessee and Cumberland watersheds are home to 300 species of fish. 

Younger mountain ranges, like the Rockies, or those that have been scoured by glaciers, just can't compare. You have to leave North America to find richer rivers.

The men who stare at fish

Evan Poellinger, one of my guides, is a friendly, lanky guy in his late 20s. He has an affable, chaotic energy to him and I later found out that he used to be in a touring, hardcore punk band back in his home state of Wisconsin. Poellinger said that the punk scene wasn't that different than being a river snorkeler. Both are adventures in improvisation. 

"There's no infrastructure for it. You don't join a local river snorkeling club," said Poellinger. "Growing up in the DYI music scene it's like, 'Oh I heard there's a show in a basement four hours away. Do you want to go?'"

Poellinger got into snorkeling through a childhood hobby of raising native fish. While out fishing in with a family friend, he caught a brightly colored male pumpkinseed fish that he ended up bringing home to his family’s unoccupied koi pond. Later he found himself fostering a largemouth bass that had some sort of stunted growth disorder. After it got beat up in the backyard pond, Poellinger set up a home aquarium for it.

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“From there it just sorta spiraled,” he said.

Poellinger went online to get aquarium tips and ran into a community of native fish keepers, snorkelers and biologists, many of them members of the North American Native Fishes Association. He started working in the summers with a local fish biologist. It was through him that Poellinger heard about snorkeling.

After he graduated high school, Poellinger swam his way through the Appalachians in East Tennessee and Western North Carolina. At an annual snorkel camping trip hosted by Western Carolina University called “Snorkelpalooza,” Poellinger was star struck.

“That was my first real taste of river snorkeling and I was hooked,” said Poellinger. “It was like, oh my god, how many of the times where I have been working have I dragged a net through a school of fish, not caught a single one and missed this massive amount of biodiversity.”

He started going to remote spots with other snorkelers, braving poison ivy, cold water and muddy wetlands to find rare fish while forging friendships, too. 

“You go through a different level of friendship,” said Poellinger. “When you have that experience with someone it’s like, OK, I’m down with this guy.”

When Poellinger’s music career didn’t stick, his friend, and my other guide Derek Wheaton, encouraged him to apply to a job at Conservation Fisheries Incorporated in Knoxville. When he got the job, his snorkeling hobby became a big part of his professional life. Conservation Fisheries sends biologists to harvest endangered and threatened species of fish to breed them in captivity. The only way to do that is with your face in the water.

“I guess I’m going to start snorkeling for a living. It was pretty much the most exciting news I could get,” Poellinger said. “Ever since it’s just been a cycle of me snorkeling for work and going out for fun and trying to fit some sleep in.”

Getting hooked

Poellinger’s story isn’t uncommon.

Andrew Zimmerman, a semi-professional freshwater nature photographer, got his start with a scuba certification to clean the inside of the show aquariums at Bass Pro Shops. His boss at the time opened up his eyes to the fish that lived in Zimmerman's neighborhood.

“He exposed me to all the different native fish — fish I had no idea could be as colorful as fish in coral reefs,” said Zimmerman. “And I thought, why mess around with fish tanks when I could see this in my own state?”

Zimmerman said that in the spring, he had a “holy grail” moment when he found and photographed a chub mound. In May, river chubs build stony reef-nests to protect their eggs. Chub nests attract other breeding fish who take advantage of the free real estate to lay their eggs in a safe place. By building nests, the chubs create pockets of biodiversity.

“It’s special,” said Zimmerman. “The majority of spawning in the streams where they occur are in the mounds that they build.”  

Zimmerman now works for an environmental consulting company as an aquatic biologist and hunts for fish to photograph in his spare time. He’s invested thousands of dollars into equipment and likens the hobby to an extreme form of hunting. Zimmerman researches ahead of time where the last known sightings of rare fish were, spending hours hiking and swimming to find his target.

“It’s not just about getting a picture of them but getting a picture that really shows them,” Zimmerman said, explaining that sometimes he takes thousands of pictures to get just the right shot.

This hunting is a part of river snorkeler culture. Tim Aldridge has a goal is to find every native freshwater species of fish in the United States, many of which have never been caught. He says he has caught 405 species of fish since he started doing this in 2016. He started here, in East Tennessee, on the Conasauga River above Chattanooga.

Tracking down a fish, learning how it lives, preparing bait, and carefully maneuvering a tiny hook and rod while swimming is therapeutic, Aldridge said.

“All the outside world is gone. You just hear the water. It’s pleasant,” he said. “You’re in a whole other world. The fish’s world.”

Aldridge is a former Marine who served for eight years including three tours of duty in Iraq. He said he suffered from PTSD and had a hard time readjusting to civilian life.

“The Marine Corps was everything to me,” he said. “When I lost that I was like, wow, what now? I’m still young.”

After experimenting with snorkel fishing, Aldridge said he felt alive. “It was like, oh my god, this is it. This is my purpose.”

The fish evangelists

While some of the people who travel to East Tennessee to snorkel are hyper-dedicated enthusiasts, there are many casual snorkelers who come on guided tours. Most of these tours are run by the Forest Service or local environmental groups. Private tours are available up in the Asheville area with an outfit called Oxbow River Snorkeling. 

"I've introduced a lot of people to it and some of them become quite rabid," long-time snorkel guide Casper Cox said with a laugh. "I am going to age out before I lose interest. I'm 64. I can't imagine doing this when I'm 71."

Cox has snorkeled for 25 years and has become something of a spiritual leader for the community, and for good reason. His enthusiasm is infectious. It was a chance encounter with Cox that convinced Tim Aldridge to get in the water and fish. 

Cox has acted as a guide for a BBC nature documentary and has written a guidebook for snorkeling. He’s also the focus of "Hidden Rivers," a documentary about the unseen life in the Southern Appalachians. The film features Cox teaching kids to snorkel and scenes of hundreds of thousands of fish migrating upstream.  

“It’s visual poetry,” said Cox. “I’m so honored to be a part of that film.”

Cox got his start casually, with a 1992 tour organized by the Tennessee Aquarium. He said that the hobby's simplicity and accessibility and East Tennessee's clean water hooked him.

“Scuba diving is very complex,” Cox said, outlining all of the travel, equipment and safety issues that go with scuba trips. “With a snorkel and a mask? You can keep that in the backseat. Anywhere with clear water, you can find it and jump in.”

Cox kept on swimming on his own. Eventually he ran into Cherokee National Forest biologist Jim Herrig while out in the field. This sparked a long-time friendship and partnership.

For nine years, Herrig and Cox led tours of senior citizens, campers, Scouts and church groups up the Conasauga River. 

“99% of the people just love it,” said Cox, who added that his biggest issue was teaching kids to calm down so the fish would come to them. “As soon as you put the mask on them, they’re like, ‘Oh my god!’”

For Herrig it wasn’t just about fun. As a biologist he hoped to give people a reason to care about rivers. The river habitats of Tennessee need protecting from silt, pollution and aging, obsolete dams. 

“If people are going to protect a resource, they’ve got to love it and be familiar with it,” said Herrig. “They could actually go to the streams we have here in the mountains and see the variety of interesting species we have out here.”

The National Forest Service eventually adopted Herrig’s snorkel school model. Biologists in several national forests up and down the East Coast take kids out for trips. Kim Winter, who runs the program for the Forest Service, said that such a program couldn’t have been born anywhere else. 

“In 100 yards of river you can see 78 species. It’s mind-blowing,” Winter said. “People going to the Caribbean see less. … It’s right in people’s backyards and they don’t even know it.”  

Word is spreading, though. Over Independence Day weekend, deep in a river gorge in Cherokee National Forest, people of all ages swam and floated in the mountains. A family with kids traded masks and snorkels. A father and son braved tough current to watch Alabama shiners with iridescent blue fins nibble on aquatic moss. A retired couple told me they had heard about the spot from Facebook group out of Georgia.

“Is it your first time?” they asked me knowingly.

When I emerged from the river, hours later, the couple had enlisted the crowd for help on a hunt for the wife’s missing glasses. They had fallen off into the water while she was adjusting her mask.

“Ah well. They were cheap anyway,” the elderly woman said. “The river is worth it."

Editor's note: A previous version of this story included a misspelled name and incorrectly attributed the organization of an event to an incorrect group in a photo caption. These errors have been corrected in this version.