NUDIBRANCHS!!!

Today we started off the day collecting samples from the bay for our invertebrate lab in the afternoon. 

The pier down the hill from campus

Starting our collections!

Sponge!

An even bigger sponge!!

Tara getting in to join the fun!

Finding clams

Are you cool enough for the clam club?

You can't be crabby when you start your day like this!

In the afternoon, we got to check out our samples under the microscope. I FOUND NUDIBRANCHS!!! They are my absolutely favorite invertebrate!! They were juvenile nudibranchs (sea slugs) so they were very very tiny. We got some better photos on the microscope camera so those will come later. We found two different species one Red-Gilled Nudibranchs and Tergipes despectus. We also found a ton of other amazing critters too!

 

Hydra

A mussel stretching out its muscular foot to move around

 





Tergipes despectus



NUDIBRANCHS!!!!



<3

Some serious nudibranch side eye. 

Lindsey and I ended up staying in lab until dinner doing a nudibranch photoshoot with the microscope camera. After dinner we had one last lecture before heading back to our rooms and relaxing.

Leaving on a jet plane... to Rhode Island

My next rotation is the AQUAVET course in Bristol, Rhode Island! I am taking the first course which covers from invertebrates to marine mammals. It is a month long crash course in aquatic veterinary medicine. I had a brief time at home to drop off my car and pick up the essentials--> snorkeling equipment ;) Mom and Dad dropped me off at the airport to begin my trip out to the east coast. The obligatory selfie was taken before going through security...

Goodbye Wisconsin!

I still haven't quite finished my presentation for this rotation yet, so I was reading a few scientific papers during the flight and I found my new favorite transitional phrase...

Scopelitis, J. et al. Coral colonisation of shallow reed flat in response to rising sea level: quantification from 35 years of remote sensing data at Heron Island, Australia. Coral Reefs (2011) 30:951- 965

"For concision sake!" This made me laugh out loud. The guy sitting next to be probably thought I was crazy laughing at a scientific paper. 

I had a layover in Philadelphia and saw this gem for GoT fans while I was walking through the terminal. 

Flying from Philadelphia to Providence was an absolutely stunning flight. Seeing all the bays and islands at sunset was beautiful. I ended up spending the night in Massachusetts before driving to Bristol to check in Sunday at noon. Bristol definitely feels very New England! We are walking distance to the Bay!! Everyone at AQUAVET is so friendly, kind and totally my people! We are all geeking out about aquatics and I love it! We also had our orientation and first lectures today. This is the building we are in!

Cetacean skeleton!

Gotta have a fish tank!

 After our evening classes finished up we had a social event where all of us got to get to know each other more.

Aren't these awesome!! When you put hot water in them you they show the map of the world. They are called global warming thermoses.

Now it is time for bed to rest up for a busy morning of sampling in the bay and classes!

First Rotation... Clinical Pathology

My very first rotation was a clinical pathology didactic. Clinical pathology supports the diagnosis of disease using laboratory testing of blood and other bodily fluids, tissues, and microscopic evaluation of individual cells. A didactic means that it was classroom lecture and laboratory work. This was great review of my clinical pathology course that I took second year especially since I felt really rusty in it. We got lots of practice looking at lab work, diagnosing disease, going through blood smears, fecal floats and other fluid analyses! 

Parasite identification galor

Strongyle egg (hookworm)

Trichuris felis

Toxocara cati

Aelurostrongylus absreusus

Cystoisopera felis

Large animal strongyle type egg

Parascaris equorum

Eimeria

Trichuris

Teania like egg

Cestode (Monezia)- Large animal tape worm

Checking out those leukocyctes

Also during this two week rotation, I got my very first patient. We don't have patient duties during this rotation, but one of my instructors texted me asking if I "want to play with fish today." My response was YES!! Meet Mopy Dick (the special species department gave him that name). He is an adult male koi fish who decided to try and eat a tank mate of his a pleco. Plecos have spines in their dorsal fins. Well one of those spines went right through Mopy Dick's mouth. I had seen him in the store a couple weeks prior and had talked to an employee about him a week earlier. He hadn't been eating for at least a few weeks! So the pet store contacted the vet school to see if there was anything that we could do to help him. Of course, our group of crazy, wonderful animal lovers said yes. And of course I said yes to taking over his care!

Our awesome resident doing endoscopy to check out his mouth and gills!

Getting some much needed food into him with an orogastric tube

Not dead, just under heavy sedation to keep him safe during the physical exam, endoscopy procedure, and initial medicine injections

Isn't he a handsome boi?! (See what I did there... a boy koi ;) )

This is what my daily treatments looked like for Mopy! Of course Emil got roped into helping me. Mopy got two injections once a day, an antibiotic and pain relief. We didn't anesthetize him to do this because that would be too stressful on a daily basis. So how to you restrain a fish for injections? Have a plan and be quick about it! I would draw up the medications while Emil got gloves and towel. I would sink one towel in the tank with Mopy and wrap him in it. The towel helps to protect his mucus layer that covers his body and it helped me grab him gently without him slipping away. We kept his eyes covered so he stayed clam and Emily just made sure he didn't flop while I gave him his injections in the muscle above his spine. We got this all done in less than two minutes and Mopy was back in his tank.

After Day 3 of his antibiotics he wasn't so mopey anymore and his abscess began to heal. After a week he was able to close his mouth all the way and started eating again! He was a great first patient.