Some 2,900 miles of rivers and streams flow through the Great Smoky Mountains, straddling the border of North Carolina and Tennessee, and just beneath the surface of these wild mountain waterways is a world swimming with fishes of all shapes and colours. Grant Fisher's Fishes of the Smokies represents the most comprehensive field guide available to date devoted to identifying and describing the astounding aquatic biodiversity of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Fisher applies years of research and working experience as an employee of the national park as he describes each featured fish species with key information including habitat, diet, range, and ecological and cultural history. Clean profile pages present each species in striking detail, while beautiful watercolour illustrations and vintage map and notebook textures woven throughout the compact field guide add warmth and a nod to the park's first naturalists.
Grant Fisher has spent years as an employee for the National Park Service in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. There, he conducted park-wide vital signs surveys of fish and aquatic insect species, helped restore populations of native Brook Trout, worked to systemically treat eastern hemlock trees against the infamous hemlock woolly adelgid, and removed exotic plant species from sensitive habitat areas in the Smokies. Fisher earned a bachelor's degree in environmental studies from Carson-Newman University and a master's degree from the Department of Forestry, Wildlife, and Fisheries at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. His master's work focused on determining the effect of stream restoration designs in urban environments on the functional lift of aquatic insect and fish communities. Fisher is a native of Sevier County, Tennessee, where he enjoys exploring the mountains he calls home.