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