ABSTRACT
On Sunday, 12 August 1973, David Etnier was collecting fish in the shallow shoals of Coytee Spring on the lower reaches of the Little Tennessee River. To Etnier, a zoologist from the University of Tennessee, the trip was little different from the many previous visits he had made to the area as part of his research into the fish fauna of this extensive river basin. Equipped with face mask and snorkel, he entered the clean, fast-flowing waters and dived down towards the river bed. What happened next has remained clear in his memory ever since:
The first fish I saw was what I thought to be a rather strange-looking and slender sculpin. I poked at it several times to obtain alternate perspectives and still wasn’t convinced that it was a sculpin. I was able to catch the fish with my hands, and upon standing up and removing my face mask was astonished to see a darter species that I immediately realized no-one had ever seen before.
