Last Day in America (Saturday, July 18)

We only had a half day of lectures today, finishing up talking about marine mammals and manatees. Dr. Bossart talked to us about his manatee conservation program, and it sounds really interesting. He mentioned that they had internships and space for students, and I'd definitely be into helping with disease surveillance or health assessment projects on manatees at some point during vet school.

The rest of the night tonight was spent sending last minute emails, checking facebook.com, talking on the phone, and otherwise enjoying American conveniences like running water, electricity, and toilet paper. We leave HBOI at 2 am tonight (so, technically Sunday morning) and drive 3 hours down to Ft. Lauderdale airport for our 6 am flight to JFK. After a 2 hour layover in NY, we have a 13 hour flight to our connection in Dubai, then another 6 hour flight to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. With the 7 hour time change, we arrive in Dar around 3 pm on Monday. Whew.

I don't know whether/how often I'll have internet access to update this blog, but I'll post when I get a chance in the next three weeks of traveling around Tanzania. You can see a summary of our route and plans on the google map that I made, here:

Map of route

If I don't get too many chances to update, keep an eye out around the second week of August (when I get back), and I'll probably post a lot all at once. I hope you enjoyed hearing about the first half (two thirds?) of my summer! Tutaonana badai!

Marine Mammal Day (Fri, July 17)

Today was our marine mammal day, and after an introductory lecture last night on different adaptive anatomy and physiology aspects of various marine mammals, we had lectures on conservation programs for a lot of them. Dr. Greg Bossart, from the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta came to talk to us about his bottlenose dolphin health assessment project, and emerging diseases of marine mammals. Dr. Alonso Aguirre, with Wildlife Trust, spoke about conservation of sea turtles on Long Island, which I found particularly surprising since in all the time I lived only a couple hours from Long Island, I never knew there were sea turtles off the coast.

The dolphin rescue and research lab boat at HBOI

In the afternoon we met up in the special marine mammal necropsy building, and had our marine mammal necropsy lab. There were 5 animals: manatee, dolphin, sea otter, elephant seal, and fur seal. My group got to necropsy the manatee, which was totally the highlight of this portion of the trip, and by far the coolest animal. It was a juvenile, maybe about 2 years old, female, and had been found dead in February. There were lots of little abscesses all over her skin, and throughout her whole body. I got to do lots of cutting through skin and blubber, and also got to remove parts of the GI system and the whole respiratory system. I always had trouble picturing how the manatee could have a diaphragm that extended horizontally along its whole dorsum, and a separate transverse septum separating the heart from the liver. But now I can really picture it, it all of its bloody and necrotic glory! We found some nematode parasites all throughout the trachea and bronchioles, which just looked like it would be terrible uncomfortable to live with, but apparently is fairly common in manatees. There were also some small worms in the GI mucosa, which also are apparently common.

Team Manatee (from the left in this photo): Me, Helen, Nicole, Stephen, and Mike. And our manatee, who you can recognize by her little flippers there at the bottom of the photo. Don't we all look official and doctor-y?!

Even after washing my hands half a dozen times, showering, and washing them another half dozen times, I still smell decomposing manatee on my hands. Nice.

With only one more night in the states, everyone was rushing to do laundry in our two washers, and frantically packing. We all hung out in the apartment with some of the professors, in celebration of the end of this portion of the trip.

Me, Julius, Mike, Vanessa, and Stephen (L to R) hanging out at the apartment

Thursday, July 16

We had a few more talks on toxicology and the marine environment, including one on oiled wildlife from Dr. Joe Gaydon from the UC Davis Oiled Wildlife Care Network.

After lunch we had our bird necropsy lab, which was really cool. They saved enough birds that we were all able to have our own bird. I got a Fish Crow that looked like it had been in the freezer for about 6 months. It didn't have any very interesting findings, and by the end I still couldn't tell how it had died, but it was really rotten and opening the mouth the first time was probably the smelliest thing I've ever smelled. I kept asking Joe whether the gross, goopy, black organs were abnormal or artifacts from autolysis and freezing, and by the end he just said that my bird was "melty." That can't be good.

Dr. Terrell demonstrating the necropsy technique on an owl

The fish crow I necropsied

Tyvek suits + Pelicans = photo op!

We had the evening off, and went to see the new Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, which I've been looking forward to for....6 years?! It was GREAT!!!

Ecotoxicology and Birds (Mon - Wed, July 13-15)

Monday we spent all day talking about toxins in the environment, especially endocrine disrupters and reproductive issues. Tuesday we started the day with introductory avian lectures, and more toxicology. In the afternoon we had short projects that we had to present with a group on methods to try to get toxicologic insults behind us. My group was assigned "major metropolitan areas of developed countries" as our specific area to focus on. With only an hour to figure out how to fix all the ecotox problems in urban areas, and summarize the problems and our solutions in a 10 minute powerpoint, the group was a little on edge. But we managed to pull together a presentation and I thought it was pretty comprehensive. The other groups had to deal with topics like mining in developing countries or proposing programs for a world conference of national political leaders, so I felt more comfortable with our topic in terms of my personal experiences. I got to add in some pictures of Gavin Newsom and his public educations campaigns and cable cars as public transportation from San Francisco.

Some of our group after lecture (starting at back left): Jenn, Jaimie, Jenny, Fidy, Stephen, Vanessa, Helen, Joanna, and Mike

Wednesday we had more lectures on birds and avian diseases, particularly avian influenza. Dr. Scott Terrell, the head pathologist from Disney's Animal Kingdom, was a great lecturer and gave us a really comprehensive introduction to avian diseases, only a few of which I'd even heard of before. We also did an exercise on how to respond to an outbreak situation with AI on a small poultry farm with Dr. Joe Gaydos from UC Davis. After lunch we had a lecture on the seemingly failed reintroduction program for the endangered whooping crane in Florida, and one on the problems in the killer whale populations of the Pacific northwest. The population was originally put in danger by live captures for aquariums and theme parks in the 1960s and 1970s, and now is having trouble rebounding because the salmon populations that the killer whales depend on for food have been decimated in many areas.

Over the past few days, we've spent our free minutes in between classes watching for manatees in the channel, and I finally saw a mom and her baby drinking water from the little water spout at the end of the channel. We also saw a small shark in the channel.

Mom and Baby manatee drinking at the water spout

Little shark in the channel

On Monday we went out to the beach to try to watch the space shuttle STS-127 Endeavor launch on its way to deliver one of the Japanese-made components to the ISS, but the launch was scrubbed at the last minute. Fortunately, the weather at Cape Canaveral held on Wednesday, and we saw the shuttle launch at exactly 6:03 pm. We could see the fire from the boosters, and then a trail as the shuttle disappeared into the clouds. Julius--and many of the other international students--were so excited at the prospect of seeing a space shuttle launch, I'm really glad it actually happened while they were here to see it.

View from the beach while waiting for the space shuttle launch

Day Off! (Sunday, July 12)

Some of the group took off at 6:30 am to head down to Big Cypress for airboat and bus tours of the swamp. Helen and I were looking for a little more restful day, so we slept in and then went to the beach in Vero Beach for the afternoon. We had a great lunch at a patio restaurant, and met up with the swamp-tour-group for dinner. It was a much needed break from the 10 hour lecture days we've been having since getting to HBOI, and definitely re-energized me for the next week of lectures. Less than one week until we leave for Tanzania!

Amphibians and Reptiles (Saturday, July 11)

We had our day of amphibians and reptiles today, with lectures on anatomy and physiology by Matt Allander, and diseases and ecotoxicology by Val and Dr. Kat Hadfield. In the afternoon we went into lab for dissections and necropsies on amphibians and reptiles. We had frogs, mudpuppies, slider turtles and various snakes to dissect, so we got to see lots of variety and actually get our hands on all the different species. Matt also brought a small alligator and a big rattlesnake to show us the necropsy on. The alligator smelled terrible, I think mostly because we opened up the stomach and let its contents waft around the room.

Matt Allander necropsying the alligator

We had the evening off, and we decided to go out for a sushi dinner and some hanging out and dancing at a local bar in Vero Beach. It was a great time, and watching Boris and Jenny salsa dance to the Jimmy Buffett cover band and Khun Bala and Michael Kuwong make friends with the locals definitely made the night.

Fidy and Stephen having a great time

Group shot from "Kelley's Irish Pub"

Fish Days (Thurs - Fri July 9-10)

We had lectures on Thursday on everything fish - anatomy, physiology, major bacterial, fungal, and viral diseases, and parasites. It was a long, long day, and I was looking forward to getting out in water on Friday to actually see some of the fish--and maybe even their parasites--that we talked about.

Friday morning we headed out in boats to one of the spoil islands in the intracoastal waterway just across from the HBOI channel. The spoil islands were created when they dredged the channel in the intracoastal for boats, and piled all the solid stuff up to make little islands. Some of the guys helped drag in a huge seine net from the boat, and we collected a whole bunch of fish and other little creatures from the water just off the island.

Field site set up on the spoil island

Some of the things we saw included
--a lot of stingrays (which made me feel better about the "stingray shuffle" walk that we've all been doing in the water since we got here to avoid stepping on them and getting stung)
--lots of various size snook
--Lookdown fish
--a bigger barracuda than the teeny one we caught the other day
--mullet fish
--a whole lot of small baitfish that we threw back

The HBOI staff had set up a whole little field station on the island so that we could do PEs, skin scrapes, blood draws, and anesthesia/euthanasia on the fish that we caught. This was great, except for the about 100,000 mutant mosquitos that were swarming around me at all times, and obviously had missed the memo that they were supposed to fear the copious DEET I had sprayed on. At one point I retreated back into the water up to my shorts so that they couldn't get at my legs anymore.

But mosquitos aside, the morning was really interesting. I started out doing PEs on the two snook that we kept. We were planning to re-release the snook, so we didn't anesthetize them, and had to be very careful handling them and making sure that we were aerating the gills when they were out of the water buckets. I failed miserably in my attempt at bleeding the snook, but I did manage to keep it alive and happy enough to let it go at the end. The stingray and mullet that I did manage to bleed--through the heart, instead of the ventral tail vein--weren't so lucky, but we euthanized them and were able to bring them back to the lab to necropsy in the afternoon.

I'm getting a blood sample from the stingray!

The necropsy lab following our field collection was great, we necropsied all of the fish that we caught and decided to euthanize. I worked with Joanna on a mullet that unfortunately for us didn't have any interesting parasites. A few people did find parasites, so we looked at some of those under the microscope, as well as normal skin scrapes, gill biopsies, and cloacal washes. I had a nice feeling of actually having learned something during first year when I was able to recognize the visceral organs of the fish, and remember some of the specifics of elasmobranchs like the spiral colon and salt gland. I was definitely having flashbacks to Comparative Anatomy labs with Dr. Hermanson, and I think those will continue all week as we move to dissecting amphibians, reptiles, and marine birds.

Later in the day we took a tour of HBOI's aquaculture facilities. They're working with the USDA on researching new ways to culture different species, and also lease space to ORA to culture aquarium fish. The aquaculture demand for clownfish has apparently skyrocketed since Finding Nemo, and we saw lots and lots of Nemos. A female clownfish typically broods her eggs in an anemone, and if she dies one of the offspring will become female and take her place....I can imagine that Pixar didn't want to deal with the complexities of that situation!

Aquaculture of "expensive food fish"

So many Nemos!

More Invertebrates (Wednesday, July 8)

We took a field trip in the morning to the waste-water treatment plant and the landfill. First we went to see how the sewage and waste water from the surrounding area is cleaned and treated and re-released. We got to walk around the top of the water plant, and see the "holding pool," which is a madmade lake they pump the water into for about 6 months before releasing it. This plant had a "finishing marsh," where they pump the water after its been in the holding pool for the final cleaning step, instead of bombing the water with chlorine and other things. The marsh was actually really pretty, and we saw some ibises, osprey, and sandhill cranes in the marsh. Apparently its a big birding destination.

Holding pools at the water treatment plant

After the water treatment plant, we drove over to the landfill. It also smelled....interesting. And like garbage. We drove up to the top of the landfill to watch the bulldozers dumping and packing the trash, and around the leachate and rainwater catchment ponds. We were able to get out at the recycling area, and saw some of the different types of recycling they collected there. They had styrofoam recycling, which was interesting because I thought styrofoam was one of those things that was never recycled.

The secret things that happen at the top of the landfill: dumptrucks full of garbage emptying a new day's layer onto the dirt

I'm pointing out all the recycled bottles and cans

When we got back--after some thorough showering--we had lectures on crabs, lobsters, shrimps, horseshoe crabs, and bivalves, led by Tom Landry from Atlantic Veterinary College and Tom Allendar from University of Tennessee Vet School.

Once we learned some basic anatomy, husbandry, and diseases, we went down to the lab and got to bleed and necropsy oysters, clams, and blue crabs. Our clams were nice and healthy, and bought from the local fish market. They oysters, on the other hand, were not doing very well and their shells were popped a little bit open. Because of this, I was able to bleed--or, extract hemolymph, since bivalves don't have blood, per se--one oyster through the cracked shell from the heart. I also cracked open a clam, which is really something I thought I'd do at a clambake rather than in a dissection lab.

Tom Landry pointing out how to "necropsy" a clam

The crabs had more discrete anatomy, that I could actually begin to identify better than "there's the foot, and there's the mantle, and there's the rest of it..." so they were interesting to open. The problem was that Matt had decided that our best method of euthanasia for the crabs would be exsanguination following anesthesia. In the end we got about 10 mL of fluid out of our crab before we decided it had to be dead, but it took about 20 minutes and three or four of us pulling blood from various areas--all 6 legs at a few different joints, plus the heart. Apparently this is a common problem not only in crabs, but lots of invertebrates. Because invertebrates have such unfamiliar physiology the drugs, and even physical methods like cervical dislocation (can you point to the neck of a horseshoe crab?) that we normally use in mammalian species don't necessarily work to euthanize them.

I'm exsanguinating our crab--or attempting to--and Mike is looking on helpfully-y

Invertebrates (Tuesday, July 7)

We spent the morning doing a field exercise on marine environments. We went to two sites along the Indian River Lagoon, one near the mouth of Taylor Creek, just south of HBOI, and one at a seagrass bed at HBOI. Taylor Creek drains agricultural land--mostly citrus, down here--and urban areas, but is also directly across from Fort Pierce inlet, so is flushed with seawater more than the HBOI site. We split up into groups and rotated through four stations at each site to measure different parameters

Water quality - temp, salinity, pH, dissolved oxygen, and depth. We also talked about water sampling and how to collect good samples for toxicology sampling.
Seining for nekton - using nets, we strained through the water to collect anything swimming around. We found
--various different small baitfish
--a tiny barracuda
--a small jellyfish
--dwarf seahorses
--a shrimp
Benthic core sampling - we cored and strained from the sand, mud and muck at the bottom, and found
--hermit crabs
--a small flounder
--lots of worm tubes and empty shells
--two brittle stars

Brittle star from the bottom in a dish back in lab

--a bunch of worms and small slimy things
--a crab
Quadrant survey of seagrass - we looked at the distribution and species of seagrass in these two locations, and found much more seagrass and a more diverse population at the HBOI site.

We were able to come back to the lab in the afternoon to look more closely at some of the creatures we caught. We had identification books, and I attempted to identify some of our creatures but had a lot of trouble deciding between the two or three best choices of species for most of them. It was great to get outside and do something active for the day, rather than sit in lecture, and I got a bit of a tan!

The class back in the lab at HBOI, ready to start identifying sea creatures

In the afternoon and evening, we heard from Tom Landry on the subject of aquaculture of shellfish, shrimp, and bivalves, and some of the problems and solutions with it.

Coral Reef Day (Monday, July 6)

We started the day by taking a visit to the "Oceans, Reefs, and Aquariums" commercial coral hatchery on the campus of HBOI. There were a few corals that made little grabbing movements that looked like little hands, and that was cool to see. We spent most of the day in lectures on coral ecology and disease, and had a lecture by Dr. Tom Eurell on his new coral surgery technique to remove the individual polyps from their hard cores.

The beach outside the Smithsonian Exhibit (we didn't get to go to the beach, just look at it)

In the afternoon we took a short field trip to the "Smithsonian Marine Ecosystems Exhibit" in downtown Fort Pierce, where they had a couple aquariums with corals and marine invertebrates. There was a "touch tank" too, and I spent most of the time we were there playing with sea cucumbers, hermit crabs, anemones, and little peppermint shrimp that cleaned the dead skin pieces off your fingers. There was a nice looking beach right outside the door, but we weren't allowed to stop in. Fortunately we have some free time scheduled this weekend so we should be able to make it to the beach at least once!

A snail sucked onto the glass of the coral aquarium

The coral reef in the Smithsonian Exhibit

Oh, and I saw my first manatee in the channel at HBOI today....it was actually a lot less exciting than it sounds--it really just floated there and then eventually disappeared underwater--I didn't even see its face, just the back bobbing in the water.

Manatee zone at HBOI

Triumphant Return (Sunday, July 5)

I took an early flight back from the wedding to West Palm Beach to meet back up with the group after my weekend away. We'll be here at HBOI for the next two weeks, at which point we leave for Tanzania.


I returned to some general lectures on ecology and environmental science, specifically in south Florida marine ecosystems and the Everglades. We also had a talk by Dr. David Jessup, from the California Dept. of Fish and Game, on the red tides in Monterey Bay, which I saw for myself about two years ago when I was living in San Francisco.

Here at HBOI we have a great cafeteria for our meals, and we're staying in the post-doc housing. We have a few little apartments--the one I'm staying in is two bedrooms and one bathroom for eight girls--so that should be interesting. They have bunk beds and even a bunk bed in the living room! I managed to get a non-bunk-bed, and I'm sharing a bedroom with Jaimie, a vet student from University of Florida.

Holiday Weekend Vacation (Fri - Sat, July 3-4)

Party in the White Oak Pavilion!

While I was gone, they had a party at White Oak to celebrate finishing our time there, then drove down to Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute (HBOI), in Fort Pierce FL, for the next portion. I was sad to miss the festivities, but the wedding was really beautiful and very fun, and I'm really happy I got to go.

Me and the McCarthy family after the wedding rehearsal dinner

Megan and Aaron at the wedding ceremony....so beautiful!

Finishing up at White Oak (Wed-Thurs, July 1-2)

On Wednesday, we talked about veterinarians role in government, and briefly how the American law-making process works. We also had lectures on case studies, including the Mountain Gorilla in Uganda, and a lecture from Lynne Gaffikan, who's worked on women's reproductive rights and education in Africa. In the afternoon and evening, we had time to finish up (aka do all the work on!) our group projects and presentations.

Thursday morning rolled around, and our group turned in our assignment and gave our Powerpoint presentation, which went fairly well. We went with our original idea of an ecotourism destination in the Amazon, although we decided to focus on the Amazon River Dolphin as sort of a charismatic species of interest to draw tourists. As soon as we finished, I hopped in a van with Dean Goeldner, who had talked to us about veterinarians in government, to head to the Jacksonville airport. For the holiday weekend, I'm taking a vacation from Envirovet to go to my boyfriend's sister's wedding near Philadelphia....I'll be back on Sunday!

Tuesday, June 30

Kevin Keel and John Fischer from SCWDS (the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study) at UGA lectured to us this morning on wildlife diseases. In the afternoon, Kevin led us in a necropsy of white tailed deer for the annual health survey of the population living on White Oak property. The deer that my group got was about a year old--still had deciduous premolars, and the third molar hadn't errupted yet--and was already full of parasites. I guess that's what you get for being a wild animal.
Our interesting findings included
Lots of keds, but no ticks
An abcess in the abomasum
Live Setaria yehi in the GI, and one in the epicardium
Calcified dead Setaria yehi in the omentum
Gongylonema pulchrum in the esophageal mucosa
Gongylonema verrucosum below the rumen wall
Fascioloides magna, giant liver flukes, embedded in fibrous capsules within the liver

We learned, though, that all of these parasites are found normally in deer, and none are thought to cause clinical disease, or have much significance to the white-tailed deer population generally. They were interesting to find, though, and you certainly don't see them in the lab mice that I'm used to. The liver flukes were particularly cool/gross, because we got to pull them out of their little capsules inside the liver, and could see their suckers.

At the beginning of the course, Val told us that we could make designs for a t-shirt, and that we'd have a little contest to decide which design would be printed. Of course, I spent the last two weeks doodling designs in the margins of my notes, and came up with a couple that I liked. I submitted them, and my design was chosen for the front of the shirt! Helen came up with the design that won for the back of the shirt, but everyone wanted me to re-draw it so that the style matched the front. So after voting I sat down to draw Helen's design, and I think it turned out pretty good.

My design for the front of the tshirt

Helen's idea, my drawing for the back of the shirt - it has everyone's names written around the edge of the turtle's shell

After interesting case-study type lectures by the SCWDS vets, and Dave Hunter from Ted Turner Enterprises, we took the night off from working on our group project and watched youtube videos instead.

Monday, June 29

In the morning we had lectures from the White Oak staff--Scott and Linda Penfold--on wildlife translocation and reproduction, including White Oak's Bongo translocation project and Linda's experience importing gerenuk semen. Bill Swanson, from the Cincinnati Zoo, talked to us about reproductive biology and how he specifically works on AI in small wild felids.

In the afternoon we went over to the White Oak "Animal Science" building, which includes the hospital and labs, and had wetlabs on biological sample handling and making blood smears, extracting and handling sperm, bovine AI, and semen assessment. I got to extract and look at sperm from a bull testicle, and we saw live dog sperm swarming around skin cells in culture. I also worked on my blood smear technique, although after doing them for months in the McDonald lab at UCSF I had lots of practice.

A cow repro tract that we used to practice AI technique

Helen examining the elecroejaculator probes for various species, from gerenuk to chimpanzee

After dinner and working on our group project for an hour or two, lots of us retired to the hot tub to hang out. Florida in the summer, turns out, isn't exactly hot tub weather! It only got down to about 85 degrees while we were in the 102 degree hot tub, but it was nice and relaxing anyway.

Weekend (Sat - Sun, June 27 - 28)

Saturday

We spent time today on non-clinical issues. Michael Manfredo from CSU spoke about the human dimensions of managing wildlife, and the sociological aspects of people's beleifs on wildlife and its value. Gwen Griffith, of the Cumberland River Compact, spoke on green development and how her organization is implementing green building projects in the Cumberland River watershed. In the afternoon we had a grant review workshop with Robert Perry, the former Environment Program Director (meaning head environmental grant-reviewer) for the Dodge Foundation. We learned about components of an effective grant proposal, and did a mock review on a proposal. This was very useful for ideas about how to write our own pre-proposal for our group project.

Sunday

This morning we had a media training exercise with Rob Hilsenroth, the Executive Director of the AAZV, practicing talking to the media and pitching our own stories. We had the afternoon off, and I went to Fernandina Beach with my Aunt Marybeth, and had a lovely and relaxing time.