What's it like taking care of 12,000 animals?

Dr. Lance Adams, Director of Veterinary Services at the Aquarium of the Pacific, discusses his 20+ year tenure and the diverse responsibilities of his role, including preventative care, quarantine, and managing over 12,000 animals.

Episode resources:

• Follow @podcific on Instagram!
• Transcript
• Hyperbaric chamber video
• Veterinary Assistant Internship
• Veterinary Externship - Preceptorship Program
• Crab prosthetic story
• Donate to help us save sea turtles!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Hi, I'm Aaron Lundie. And I'm Madeline Walden, and this is Aquarium of the Pod Civic, a podcast brought to you by Aquarium of the Pacific, Southern California's largest aquarium.

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Join us as we learn alongside the experts in animal care, conservation, and more.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Welcome back to Aquarium of the Pod Civic. I'm Madeline Walden, the Aquarium's Digital Content and Community Manager.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

And I'm Erin Lundy, the manager of conservation initiatives here at the Aquarium of the Pacific. Today we have on one of our staff veterinarians, Dr. Lance Adams. Welcome. Hi, Dr.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Adams. Hello, how are you two today?

SPEAKER_00 0:37

Good.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

We're good. We're excited to do this re-record it again because we I don't mind peeking behind the curtain. We did record this episode about a year ago.

SPEAKER_02 0:47

But so much has happened. Do you want to change my intro? Because I'm actually like the director of veterinary medicine.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

Oh my gosh, I do snap. Why don't I have you introduce yourself? That's okay.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

Today we have on me.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

Director of Veterinary Medicine. Dr.

SPEAKER_02 1:00

Lance Adams, the Director of Veterinary Medicine at the Aquarium of the Pacific.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

Thank you. We should actually make all of our guests introduce themselves. I like this. It's better. Do it yourself. We're tired.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

It's better because I also forgot to ask you what your official title was before I did it. Director of Veterinary Medicine. That is also new this year.

SPEAKER_02 1:16

Veterinary Services.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

Oh my gosh. I can't even do it.

SPEAKER_02 1:20

Yeah. It's okay. My job's still the same. My title changed.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

Help the animals. And how long have you been at the aquarium now?

SPEAKER_02 1:30

I started in August of 2001, so just a little over 23 years.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Aaron Ross Powell Wow. Long time. That is a long time. Aaron Ross Powell Did you start out as a veterinarian then too? Or where has your has your job title changed over the past 23 years?

SPEAKER_02 1:43

Aaron Ross Powell Yeah, I was hired on as a full-time staff veterinarian right when I started. It changed. When I actually applied, it was a part-time position, but by the time my start date happened, it got converted already over into a full-time position. So I was really happy about that.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

Aaron Powell What's it like taking care of 15,000 animals?

SPEAKER_02 2:02

Well, I mean, luckily I don't have to do that all myself, right? So my job is basically to plan out the preventative care for the animal collection to make sure that things like quarantine are done and that we don't bring new diseases in so that the animals that we do have don't become sick and we try and minimize that. But they still have problems, either from you know just nature, right? Even though it's it we're in an aquarium, there's still nature things that happen and fish interact with other fish and animals interact and problems happen, sometimes different problems and they would get out in the wild, but problems none the same. It can be a challenge. It can be like a tidal wave sometimes if there's a lot of problems happening, and other times it could be a little bit slow. But the diversity of the responsibilities of my job are really broad. So it's not just coming in and looking at the animals every day. There's, you know, a lot to do with research or conservation and doing PR marketing and training students and dealing with things as a manager from you know employment issues, things like that. So there's always something to do. And it kind of just shifts. Like today, what's the really important thing to get done? And we focus on that, and then we go to the less important stuff.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

Aaron Ross Powell Truly day by day. Yeah. There's really no average day in your life here, right?

SPEAKER_02 3:18

No. No. No day is really ever the same.

SPEAKER_01 3:23

Yeah, with 12,000 plus animals, I guess there's always something different going on. What about before Aquarium of the Pacific? Where did you work before and what was your schooling like?

SPEAKER_02 3:33

Yeah, so after I finished my undergrad degree at Cal Poly Pomona in animal science, I then went to Kansas State University for veterinary school. I initially thought I was going to be interested in becoming an equine practitioner working on horses. But when I was in school, I found out about kind of an opportunity to work in the aquatic animal medicine field, primarily with fish, which I was very comfortable with from my home hobbies and things, having aquariums and knowing a lot about fish. And so at that point I looked into that as a career option. I was like, wow, you know, this is actually something I'm probably more prepared for from my experience before going to vet school than a lot of people. So it might be a neat niche job that I could get into that would really fit me, even though I still love horses. Um and it just seemed like something that would be better suited to me. So after veterinary school, I did some additional training. I actually practiced small animal medicine for a year in a at a training facility at VCA in Los Angeles.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

What does small animal medicine entail?

SPEAKER_02 4:35

Aaron Ross Powell Yeah. So small animal medicine and surgery would primarily be like dogs and cats.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

I pictured hamsters.

SPEAKER_02 4:43

Yeah, domestic domesticated animals. Yeah, and and part of that is there too. We we usually classify those as like pocket pets, you know, ferrets, rabbits, rodents, small pocket two different things. And then exotic or reptiles. You know, there's a there's a large variety out there, right? So but then uh after that training program, I went to do a specialty aquatics training program at the New England Aquarium in Boston for a year.

SPEAKER_03 5:08

Very cool.

SPEAKER_02 5:08

And while I was there, this position opened up at the Aquarium of the Pacific, and this is where I lived before I went to veterinary school. So I was like, hey, that's great. I get to come home and be around my friends and my family. So I took the opportunity and luckily I got it.

SPEAKER_01 5:22

So we're lucky. That's awesome. Back to SoCal, too. I'm sure that was a nice change in pace. Yeah. Yeah. Back home.

SPEAKER_00 5:28

And there are still times where all of your schooling comes in handy. One of my favorite things is that when we were doing an auto transport once, we were driving past just fields of cows, and for some reason, Dr. Adams was able to name every breed of cow. And I was like, why do you know every cow by name? And it turns out that was like your special interest when you were in college, right? Like you very much studied like hoofstock.

SPEAKER_02 5:52

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Agriculture. Yeah. It was a big part of my agriculture training. We had to do a lot of work with the cattle industry and learn about it. And yeah, so I had to learn all of the different main breeds of cattle that are raised here in the U.S. Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

That's my favorite. He knows every cow. We would drive past the field and I'd be like, what's that? And he would know and believe it.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

And I believe it. I fully believe it. Wow. So going from horses to fish, that's a big difference in their anatomy. Did you find any similarities between them or the way you learned about them?

SPEAKER_02 6:25

Yeah, so it's kind of their systems are all kind of similar in that their body components, the building blocks of their bodies are not all that different. And then if you take those building blocks and you arrange them differently and sort of modify the physiology of how things work for the life that those animals have living in water, fresh water or salt water, different, you know. You know, then you just learn those differences and then you can start to adapt things that you learned on the other species to these. So but now in the last, I don't know, 15 years, aquatic animal medicine and the study of these particular animals and how to manage them in human care, and also for wildlife purposes and managing wildlife populations, helping wildlife populations, there's a lot more now that's being learned. Like every year I go to an annual conference for aquatic animal medicine, the International Association of Aquatic Animal Medicine, and it just amazes me. Like every year, there's like, I'm like, really? Somebody studied that? Like, and now we know that, like for sure, definitively. Before it was always like, hey, you know, how does this fish's gill work? Or how is this lung fish different than a water breathing fish? And that kind of information gets studied, and you're like, wow. And and a lot of it. And so there's almost more information coming out every year about aquatic animal species than I can keep up with and learn. So that's a challenge too, is staying informed and educated.

SPEAKER_00 7:53

Aaron Powell, I'm sure. I mean, even you were saying horses and fish are very different, but those are at least still vertebrates. I mean, we have jellies, we have sea stars, we have so many different species of animals that are even more diverse and far apart than horses and mammals and fish are. Yes. That it must not be easy to keep track of everything.

SPEAKER_02 8:10

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: It's it's interesting trying to adapt things over, you know, like how do you treat an anemone? What are the problems of anemone? How is its anatomy different and how can you help it? Because I mean, when you get down to it primarily, the way veterin works or medicine works in general, is you know, you you're not completely fixing that animal's body. You're just giving it enough help and fighting off whatever pathogen it has so its body can then recover and then f fight itself up, fight off whatever the problems are or heal from whatever the problems are. So we have to try and do that for these animals. Like, you know, how do you how do you take that step to help them get over the hump of recovering from whatever's bothering them?

SPEAKER_00 8:52

That's crazy. Just imagining trying to look at an animal that is further away from me than you know, like already a shark seems pretty distant, but a sea star and understanding the systems and processes that go on in that animal's body are going to be significantly different than anything else. Do you feel like a lot of the learning that you've done on these species is sort of on-the-job exposure to them, and then you kind of do research to follow up, or is it as problems arise you learn them?

SPEAKER_02 9:19

Both. Both. Sometimes we have an opportunity to sort of prospectively learn things by trial and error, like we're gonna try this, see what happens, try this, see what happens. And sometimes we're trying things and they just fail, and then that's how we learn, and we do something different next time.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

Crazy, cool. My my brain's going to so many different places.

SPEAKER_02 9:36

Yeah, my coral has a cold. You know, it's sniffly. Yeah. So it's it's interesting. I mean, they definitely have diseases that bother them, and you know, the there's a realm there where biology and you know, marine biology and veterin can really overlap in studying and understanding diseases and how to manage those diseases and how to help coral populations from problems that are occurring from climate change. So it's uh it's amazing what uh having a degree in veterinary medicine and working in that provision can lead you to. It's really, really varied.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

Aaron Ross Powell And then just being in a place where you are working with such diverse species too, you're just constantly learning.

SPEAKER_04 10:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:21

Fascinating. Have you done any more official learning since being at the aquarium? Have you studied anything else through any schooling, or has it been mostly just attending these conferences and learning on the job?

SPEAKER_02 10:32

Aaron Ross Powell I've taken a few college courses and I definitely attend a lot of like web webinars that are put on through different universities and led by veterinarians for special topics. I I just it doesn't have much to do with the job here, but I just spent several days at home listening to a webinar on rabbit disease, a very specific rabbit disease that was produced by one of the laboratories that we work with, and they offered this free seminar. And I was like, Wow, you know, this has been a really challenging disease when I have seen rabbits in private practice, and I was like, I need to learn what's up with this. And so yeah, I spent you know, 10, 12 hours watching lectures by experts in the field on that particular disease so that I could uh be better and know more.

SPEAKER_00 11:17

Just in your leisure time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:20

I'm learning about rabbit disease.

SPEAKER_02 11:21

There's no leisure time.

SPEAKER_01 11:22

Yeah. But I'm sure there's something there that will come in handy down the line. Who knows? You know, you're learning, just constantly learning, and like you said, so many diverse species here. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Do you feel like the field has changed pretty significantly since you started here?

SPEAKER_02 11:36

Yes. The knowledge has defin the field has really grown. Like before you would look try and look something up, either in books or online, and you might get like one article about it or mention in some historical article, but it's not exactly what you're looking for. But now there's like every year papers coming out that you know are saying like we specifically tested for this in bat rays or cownos rays or sharks or fish or marine mammals. And it's really impressive. Some of the work folks are doing is really, really amazing. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

An exciting time. It is awesome. Pretty cool. There's definitely been a couple of times where I mean, we had some pretty niche amphibians at some point, and I feel like bringing you a case of like, hey, this Sicilian has this strange thing going on with it. It's crazy to think that that might have been the first time that anyone had ever attempted some of the treatments that we attempted on those animals ever, just because of how niche those animals are. And it was it's cool to be a part of process, you know, even if something doesn't work out, you still learn from it, and you certainly learn from the process. And so it's cool to be at a place where we're like, hey, this is the first time anyone's ever tested for this thing on this species of animal. This is the first time we've ever tried anything on this species of animal. And I'm always happy that we're trying, even if things don't end up working out the way that we potentially hope them to work out. So it's been cool. It's all good research. Yeah, that's for sure. Do you use that data and like do you share that data externally to kind of better practice elsewhere?

SPEAKER_02 13:00

Yeah, so there's a couple of different ways we can share information. There's, you know, we call, you know, word of mouth between veterinarians on listservs and things like that, where we can talk about cases and share our experiences. It's a little bit harder when it comes to trying to get, say, something published to get into the literature and then into books and stuff, because those types of studies have to be very regimented. They have to have a lot of controls on them so that the outcomes are you truly know that the outcome is what you think it is and it hasn't been affected by some sort of other factor. And so those are more difficult because they usually require a larger number of animals, set environmental conditions, and yeah, that just it it's not always something that we can do with our animals because we're also not only just looking at how to care for the animals or how to fix them when they're sick, but also like managing their welfare and such. And so doing procedures on a research basis that could have some sort of negative impact on the animal is really truly avoided unless it's super important and there's no other way to figure that out.

SPEAKER_00 14:03

Aaron Ross Powell But you do participate in research in sort of a different capacity here and it's kind of more specifically with zebra sharks, right?

SPEAKER_02 14:10

Aaron Ross Powell Yeah. We do I would refer to it mostly as like clinical research, where we're not trying to figure out like how a toxin affects an animal or how that animal's physiology necessarily specifically works, or if we can, you know, test a cosmetic product on an animal like, you know, standard research. We're we're looking at research projects like what can we the things that we do to the animals to help take care of them, can we validate that through a scientific process to make sure that, you know, we're getting true results, that we actually are helping the animals by what we're doing. And our work with zebra sharks is a little bit different. That's a little bit of work that we're doing just for scientific advancement in the reproductive area. And, you know, with with sharks in general and aquariums and managed populations, a lot of aquariums will have a few sharks of one species. And if we do have reproduction and those babies then go to other aquariums, eventually those that successful breeding pair is going to be really overrepresented. And so we're we're we were looking at a couple of things, or we have been, and we still are, trying to crack the nut on shark reproduction and captivity is you know, one, how do we breed the animals that we want to breed together for genetic reasons from different institutions without having to move them all over the United States? Can we use reproductive technologies like artificial insemination to do that? And then for those animals that are in captivity that just don't breed, whatever the reason is, you know, trying to look at their physiologic systems to see like what about their reproductive physiology, their cycles, their uh bodies are not working right that they don't want to breed. And it could be so many different things. It could be water temperature is wrong, lighting is wrong, water quality issues are wrong. There's something that's different in their their water. We don't do they have enough room, do they have enough depth? Do they have enough of their species to have the right social interactions to want to reproduce? And so, you know, we look at those types of factors too and make modifications and try and determine what it is that might be the hurdle to getting those animals to reproduce so we can have sustainable populations without going back out and collecting another animal in 20 or 30 years when this one expires.

SPEAKER_01 16:40

I want to back up a little bit and talk a little bit about your team here at the aquarium. What does that look like? I know you are not our only vet anymore. I know that was the case for a long time. How long were you the aquarium's only veterinarian?

SPEAKER_02 16:51

Aaron Powell Maybe 16 years, 17 years. I was the primary staff veterinarian. It was myself and a vet tech working here together as a team to try and manage the needs of the animal collection. But more recently we've expanded that, and that's primarily also because we ext expanded our hospital. We did that in 2010, built the Molina Animal Care Center, which is kind of like a custom built veterinos for an aquarium. And also it serves as a an exhibit, something to engage our visitors as well. They can uh one side of the building is completely open with windows and they can watch us providing the medical care to the animals, doing their exams, doing their procedures, you know, just to kind of show people that, you know, the the practice that we do of animal care here and that stewardship over those animals that are under managed care and how that kind of can relate to the stewardship and management of the animals in the wild, that you know, the the ocean's huge place, the world's a huge place, but it is kind of like our planet's aquarium, right? And so, you know, if we care so much about these animals to take care of them on an individual basis, I think hopefully it encourages people to think more about like, hey, how are we as a human population taking care of the animals in our world aquarium?

SPEAKER_00 18:07

Aaron Ross Powell Absolutely. The Molina Animal Care Center, I really appreciate the transparency in the care. You know, people can literally watch surgical procedures happening. They can watch sometimes people just watch meetings that are which is always very funny. But we have people who can just come up, and there's usually an educator who interprets what's going on with the procedure, why the animal's getting the procedure. And I think guests really appreciate that level of transparency with our aquarium that, hey, sometimes animals do get hurt, or sometimes they're sick, and that's okay and normal, and that we have a plan to react to that and what we can do to provide care for them. I think people really appreciate being able to see that. Was that always meant to be part of the design with the animal hospital? I know you were a big part of sort of building that building and making it what it is. Was that always the intention?

SPEAKER_02 18:52

Sure. Yeah, I mean, I think we always want to, you know, when we're we're spending money to build facilities at the aquarium, we're always trying to get the most out of it that we can. And certainly that educational component and engagement component of what we do in the hospital, we wanted to be able to open up to our visitors so that they could see what we were doing. So it was always part of the plan. I got a little bit of exposure to that when I was in my internship because it had something similar at the New England aquarium. Their whole hospital wasn't on exhibit, but they did have an area where the animals that were getting treated could be seen by the public. And there is some interaction that could take place so people could ask questions or get some additional learning about uh specially care the animals received.

SPEAKER_00 19:35

Aaron Ross Powell Have you ever had anyone react negatively towards like a procedure that's happening in there?

SPEAKER_02 19:40

Aaron Ross Powell Yes. There hasn't been anything dramatic. You know, it's not really dramatic, but you know, you hear the ooze and ahs from the people, and some people will be like, and they'll like turn away because you know it's too much for them. You know, whatever their their in level of tolerance is for that sort of thing, or interest in that sort of thing. And then there's other people I think who come and watch and they're like, wow, I never thought I would like enjoy this or feel like I'm learning or part of this. And then they do, and they're like, wow, that was really exciting and it's amazing. And how did you keep that animal alive through everything you just did, and now it's swimming back around just like it was normally?

SPEAKER_00 20:21

It's been really cool, and I think the times that I've seen people react more strongly in sort of a negative or like fearful way is usually the animals that are closer related to humans. And it's just, you know, that initial reaction. I think our harbor seal had cataract surgery, and I think people were very squeamish watching eye surgery happen, although that certainly was happening right up against the window. And the other one that I saw a bunch of guests, specifically male guests, react poorly to was one of our sea lions chases neuter surgery. Sure. Everyone watching that surgery, I could just tell the moment that there was some separation made that all the male guests were like, ooh, a little squeamishness to that.

SPEAKER_02 20:59

For sure.

SPEAKER_00 21:00

But all those things were things that guests could engage with and they could watch. And even just last week we were watching crab surgery. And so, you know, the surgery on all different types of animals. The spider crab surgery that you've been doing recently is really cool. Do you want to talk a little bit about what that looks like?

SPEAKER_02 21:15

Sure. Sure. Yeah, that's a really interesting process that we've been doing. There's a lot of backstory there, too, so I could probably talk a lot about it. But um it we have done this work on a Japanese spider crab. More recently, we've been working on a California king crab. His name's Caesar, just because she's his name is Caesar. And Caesar came into us about a year and a half ago. He was rescued by the aquarium after a collection in a trawl survey off of our coast. Caesar had a big hole in his shell. Well, not that big, maybe the size of a quarter, a little smaller than a quarter. And of course, that doesn't make for the best exhibit animal for us, because the folks who come are get really concerned. They're like, hey, that animal looks different than all the other animals. What's going on? On with it. Which uh is great that people have that much concern, but for the employees who are taking care of those animals, you have to answer that phone call or a radio call multiple times every day to say it's fine, it's normal. Anyways, so we decided we were gonna, you know, put a little patch over it to hide that hole, cover it up so that the animal looked normal and see what happened. And so for about a year and a half we did that, and he was looking really good, he's still alive, doing great. And more recently he started developing some other what we call black shell disease in which these dark patches uh start to occur on their shell, and it's largely from invasion of bacteria into their shell. And crabs would often, could often just like molt in the wild, but as they get bigger, they do that less often. And so these lesions are become significant for the animals, the infection can then get inside them. And so we've had to try and work on ways of one preventing it from happening and trying to slow it down through things like nutrition and water quality, but it's still happening now. We haven't solved that one yet. But in this case, he had a large area that developed on his shell, and actually one on his back, a couple on his legs, and so we we would take this crab and we would anesthetize him. So he goes to sleep, becomes unconscious, stops moving, and we keep him moist and wet. Luckily, they don't have to be constantly submerged in water like fish, so we have a little more flexibility there. And then we clean up the lesion, we remove the parts of the shell that are damaged and eaten away by bacteria, get back to the healthy stuff, seal it up, and then put a patch over it that looks just like his regular shell, and blend it right back in. It's it's a pretty cool process. I certainly never planned on having to do this. It wasn't anything I trained in or really, you know, experienced.

SPEAKER_01 23:53

Specialized in crab plastic surgery.

SPEAKER_02 23:55

Yeah, this was kind of a new experience, but it's been fun. It's been interesting and exciting to see it kind of work and come together. Sometimes we've had to do the patches more than once to get a good fit and a nice seal on there. And it and I mean we're still in the experimental phase, too. It's not like we have done this for years and years and years. This guy is, you know, a little bit of our practice animal to see if we can actually help him through this. And so far so good.

SPEAKER_03 24:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:20

And hopefully it continues to go on year after year, and underneath those patches we put on, he'll heal his shell up and be good. And then when he has comes time to molt, if he's gonna molt again, you know, hopefully he'll his new shell will be even nicer underneath. But you know, for now, he's on exhibit living good crab life.

SPEAKER_00 24:39

And his little crab life.

SPEAKER_02 24:41

And our uh no one's asking about him constantly so the keepers can do their work. So it's so cool. It's a win-win situation.

SPEAKER_01 24:49

It was so cool to be a here and a part of something and or seeing something in action of something like that that's so new and we've never had to do before and you've never studied, and this is it's just really cool. Yeah. Crab aesthetics.

SPEAKER_00 25:01

Is the reason you patch it because you spend a good amount of time matching the shell color and matching it, so you almost couldn't tell that this crab had had a procedure. Like it looks just like its shell. Is that level of attention to detail and what it looks like more for the crab so other animals don't pick at its shell and so it doesn't have like a weird spot on it that looks different? Or is it more for guests to not really appreciate the fact that this animal has had this procedure done?

SPEAKER_02 25:26

Aaron Powell Yeah, I don't I don't know about the first part of that question. I haven't really tested that out for this particular situation. I know animals and aquatic animals like fish in general do notice things in other animals uh, you know, when they look different or I mean it's a fish eat fish world out there.

SPEAKER_01 25:46

Literally.

SPEAKER_02 25:47

Literally. And and so they're always looking. You know, is that one not quite right? Is that my next meal potentially? You know, so I imagine the same thing happens with uh other species too. And so it may offer them some level of protection, though here in our closed systems and stuff, there's not the crabs aren't in with those predators. You know, so I don't know that, you know, and under those circumstances we're providing them with that much protection. And I would say it's mostly so that you know the guests don't perceive that there's you know, they think there's something wrong with that animal, because it looks different even though it's healthy and thriving.

SPEAKER_00 26:24

It looks so exactly like your shell.

SPEAKER_01 26:27

I'm really excited for our followers to get to see it because we're gonna do a couple stories about it. And we were just shooting today, actually. Brooke and Dr. Adams were working on Caesar? A different crab.

SPEAKER_02 26:36

No, that's Caesar. No, that's Caesar? Yeah. That's Caesar. Yeah, one of our aquarius, Brooke, has done a really good job. She took a special interest in like uh aquarium structural design, designing corals, lifelike structures, things like that, using materials that are non-toxic that we can put into tanks. And so because she had that interest, and I was like, hey, I think we could do this and we can make this mold and it will look really great. She's like, I can do that. So she experimented with some different materials that uh to find out what would work well and stay on underwater and be adhesive and be structurally sound for this animal. And it's turned out to be really, really amazing looking so far. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:11

It looks really, really good. And that was something that our guests got to watch and enjoy today. We had a bunch of field trips coming by, which was really cool. I got to look over and see all these kids watching. It was awesome. I I walked outside and they're like, they're doing surgery on a crowd.

SPEAKER_02 27:24

Yeah. I don't I don't even get to see that.

SPEAKER_01 27:27

You're like a rock star in there.

SPEAKER_02 27:28

I'm so focused on the procedure that I'm doing. I'm just like right there and everything else that's happening. I don't really know if people are like appalled looking through the window or if you're a work like, oh my gosh, this is great. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:41

That's so cool. I was gonna ask, is that something that you're ever distracted by or if you're so tuned in?

SPEAKER_02 27:47

Like occasionally I get distracted. For the most part, I try and I try and function like they're not even there. And that way they're getting a realistic like impression of what's happening in the hospital. But you know, we do get a lot of people who like knock on the window and try and get our attention. We have to give them a little wave and ask, yeah, don't do that.

SPEAKER_01 28:05

So what was it like before the Malene Animal Care Center was built?

SPEAKER_02 28:08

Aaron Ross Powell Oh, it was great because I was doing what I loved. I had a job at an aquarium working on the these really unique animals doing really cool stuff. But it was a puzzle. Like we were working out of a very small room, probably about the size of the studio right now, maybe, you know. Small. Small. And we always had to arrange it for whatever was happening that day and try and figure things out. We did a lot of our procedures tank side, you know, more like uh Army Field Hospital than a regular veterinary clinic. And so when we did get the Malina Animal Care Center built, it it's amazing. Like things happen so much faster. Someone can come to me and say, hey, my animal has this problem, I can say, okay, bring it down half an hour, we can start this procedure. Whereas before I'd be like, well, give me like two hours so I can pull this equipment out of the room and clean this all up and set up just specifically for this animal. So it it opened up a whole nother level of practice. And then as our program expanded to be able to fill that space by bringing on, I think you mentioned earlier, now we have a full-time tech, a part-time tech, a full-time veterinarian, and myself as the director. And so now we have this full staff of folks there that can really handle the bigger caseload of the collection that we have and get things done immediately rather than saying, like, oh no, we're too busy today. We have to see that animal tomorrow. We can do it all.

SPEAKER_01 29:34

Aaron Powell That's great. And what kind of specialized equipment does the Mac have?

SPEAKER_02 29:37

Aaron Powell We have most equipment that a general veterinary practice would have, and maybe some s a little bit of specialty equipment too. The thing that's different about it for us is we have to deal with water all the time. So our equipment and our cabinets and our carts and all that stuff is designed to be more water resistant than you would typically see. But you know, we have radiography equipment, which is like for taking x-rays, ultrasound equipment for doing exams, laparoscopy, endoscopy. We have all the tech equipment for monitoring animals under anesthesia and ventilators and you know, electronic thermometers and oxygen measures and radiocottery, the things that we use for surgery. So it's a pretty advanced set of equipment that we have here. I'd say we some of our things that we don't have, like people would be used to knowing about, like we don't have a CT imager or an MRI imager, things like that. For that, we have to go outside to a referral hospital and transport our animals to get to do that. We just don't have the space equipment. Yeah, and you really need to have a lot of patients to justify having that kind of thing that need it. We just don't have that. But it's great because you know, veterinary hospitals do, specialty veterinary hospitals where they didn't 15 years ago, and now we can bother them instead of bothering, you know, a human hospital and saying, like, hey, can we please bring our sea turtle or sea lion to the human hospital? Yeah, and they're like, yeah, sneak them in the back door at 11 o'clock tonight.

SPEAKER_00 31:07

Yeah. Just imagining them coming through like the ambulance bay doors, and it's just a sea lion coming through.

SPEAKER_02 31:12

But yeah, don't mind don't mind our baby.

SPEAKER_00 31:15

He just looks a little different. Yeah. He's just like 400 pounds. Don't worry about him. There's been a handful of times we have utilized an off-site MRI, you know, for some diagnostics, especially in recent times, and it's been cool to watch the process of like moving an animal there. And that in and of itself is its own puzzle of like logistical people need to be able to handle the animal, we need to be able to sedate the animal on that end of things and then you know monitor them through the procedure. And so it takes a whole suite of people up. And out of everything that we have, we have so much specialized equipment, we have so many amazing things in the hospital. The thing that every person stops and asks me about is the fish anesthesia cart, which is like not that high-tech of a thing. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 31:55

It's like the classic utility cart that you guys have totally transformed. Sure, sure. So it's almost the least impressive part because it's so it's so you know, just basic. Yeah, basic is the word for it. But it does the job. But it's really cool looking. Can you talk about that a little bit?

SPEAKER_02 32:10

Sure. Yeah. The our anesthesia cart we have for like medium-sized fish, you know, maybe gosh, in the smallest, you know, a few hundred grams all the way up to maybe ten pounds we can put on that anesthesia machine. It's like um one of those utility rolling carts made out of plastic, which is great because it doesn't rust with the salt water. And then we have it fitted so that we can have our anesthesia water down below, a pump that pumps it up to the fish and it circulates through the fish's mouth and over its gills so it can breathe, and we have anesthesia in that water so it stays asleep. But then we can still have the body of the fish kind of out of water, whatever part we need to work on, so we don't have to worry about that contamination. And then the water drains down and back into the sump below, and it just recirculates like that, so it stays oxygenated. We of course have to monitor the temperature, make sure it doesn't get too cold. But yeah, it's really, really pretty simple. It's a gravity-based with a and then a pump that pumps the water back up, not too many components. And the fish do really well under anesthesia. The medications that we use are very safe in them. And you know, we can have fish anesthetized for several hours that way and manage them successfully and still be able to recover them and wake them back up.

SPEAKER_01 33:24

What kind of procedures are you doing on that table?

SPEAKER_02 33:27

You know, it it's really varied. Sometimes we're doing like uh injury repair, sometimes which often happens to their eyes or their skin over their body, and we're putting in sutures like getting stitches to help that wound heal faster by being closed and prevent infection from happening. We also do ultrasounds on that table when we're trying to examine animals. We've done mass removals, we've done procedures where you know we have to go in and say retrieve uh fish aren't the brightest. You know, th this this doesn't happen with you know, they're they're smart in their own way. Yeah. Yeah, but even like our domestic pets, there's probably listeners who are thinking, like, oh yeah, my dog ate this rock. Or well, fish do it too. And so and so every once in a while we'll have fish that eat something that's too big to come out of its stomach, and they are not regurgitating it back out on their own. So we have to anesthetize them and we'll go in with like a long pair of uh forceps and grab a hold of whatever it is that's in their stomach and bring it out. Or sometimes we have to send the endoscope in there to see what the problem might be. But we also do sometimes do surgery on them. Occasionally, animals with reproductive disease. We might like say something listeners would be accustomed to would be having your dog spade, in which case you remove the ovaries so it's can't reproduce anymore. And occasionally with fish we have problems where their ovaries become hyperactive because they're not breeding correctly and it fills up their body cavity, and then they get sick and don't feel good. So then we could potentially have to remove those over the ovaries to accomplish the same thing for them.

SPEAKER_00 34:59

It's fascinating. Really anything that needs to be done under like heavy sedation on that size of animal is appropriate use for the fish cart.

SPEAKER_01 35:06

For water an animal that breeds underwater.

SPEAKER_02 35:08

Yeah, and most people like don't understand. They're like, fish can't survive out of water. How do you take it out of water? And it's like, well, we're mostly taking it out of water.

SPEAKER_00 35:16

His insides are in water. Pouring water over it constantly. Including Caesar, he was getting surgery on that cart, right?

SPEAKER_02 35:22

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 35:22

Same thing. Because he, like fish, breathe through his gills.

SPEAKER_02 35:25

Yeah, his challenge is he's we've got to stay really cold. So those animals are like fifty degrees and less. And our room temperature is like seventy degrees. So yeah, while he's out, we have the water that's circulating through the cart being iced and keeping a track of that with the thermometer, and then we keep, you know, dousing him with it so his body and his blood are all circulating, staying cool.

SPEAKER_00 35:47

It's a lot of things to think about. It is a lot to think about. I also really like the um compression chamber for fish. That one is always funny. And it's also not something people think about with like people or small animal medicine of just having this compression chamber. And oftentimes I'll walk by and there's just a single fish in this huge system. And sometimes it's a really small fish. And I'm always just like, what is this little guy doing in here? What is the compression chamber? What is it treating for?

SPEAKER_02 36:13

Yeah, so it's not uncommon for fish to have problems with gas management in their body. So I can try and relate it to like a scuba diver that goes down and they're breathing air, and under pressure, there's more of that dissolved gas in their bloodstream, and then they come up and the pressure decreases as they're less deep. And that air then comes out of solution because its solubility is dependent on pressure and temperature. So as they come up, it comes out into their bloodstream, and then it has to have somewhere to go, and it's not really meant to be there in gas form, and so then it can come out in parts of their body and block blood vessels, things like that. Well, in fish that happens too. So they actually have most fish have a swim bladder or trapped air pocket inside their body that helps regulate their buoyancy so they're not always floating up or floating down or sinking. They're kind of just maintaining neutral position in the water. And sometimes things happen to where that swells up too much if you change their depth too much, or sometimes when fish are fighting or getting into trouble, sometimes the gas will come out of their bloodstream and go off into their eye, and then their eye swells up like they got you know punched in the eye, and they have this globe that's three times the normal size with an air bubble in it. And all that does damage to the fish's eye. And there's a couple ways we can manage it. One is put a needle in there, which is always fun to put a needle in an eye, and then take the air out.

SPEAKER_01 37:36

It's always fun.

SPEAKER_02 37:37

Using using that, but you know, that can cause more trauma, even though it resolves the condition and the trauma can heal. But we modified a system that was used for bringing fish up from depth without injuring them to treat these fish that are already at sea level in our collection that have these gas problems. And we can put them in there and re-pressurize them using a water pump and restricting flow to increase the pressure just like we are sinking them deeper into the ocean. So sometimes we'll put them down to 30 feet or 60 feet inside this little chamber. And the same thing happens when a diver gets bends. Just with them, they're in a chamber full of pressurized oxygen or gas, because they need to breathe that. But with fish, it's in water. And it's actually easier. It's a lot easier to manage the pressure in water than it is in air.

SPEAKER_03 38:25

Makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 38:26

Yeah. And so and they get relief almost instantly when we put them at that depth. So the air for every uh one atmosphere, about 30 feet of depth, we put them at, the air will shrink 50% of its size. So the first the first 30 feet is great, boom, half its size, and then the next 30 feet it goes half of that again. And then plus the solubility of the gas into liquid increases because of the pressure, and the gas will then move from a free space back into the fish's body fluids. Those will circulate, go to its gills, the gas will go out the gills, and now it's equilibrated at that pressure, and we can slowly lower the pressure over time, and the fish slowly adjusts and bring it back to sea level surface temperature, surface pressure, and then they're usually pretty good to go. Wow. I'd say that changed our success rate from about 50-50 to probably like 80 percent. That's wonderful in being able to resolve that problem for those fish.

SPEAKER_01 39:23

That's amazing. Do you see like the a pretty immediate change in the behavior of the fish when that's happening? Or is it just are they just kind of hard to read? They're a little bit they're a little bit hard to read.

SPEAKER_02 39:34

Expressionless. The thing you can check is even though we're treating for the gas in their eye, you can see how the pressure is affecting their swim bladder. So a lot of times, you know, the fish will be neutrally buoyant floating around with this really big swollen eye, which is kind of trying to lift him up like a balloon underwater. And we'll get the pressure up, that'll shrink, and all of the fish will just like settle down. Just be like, ah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:57

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 39:58

So it they do get some immediate relief.

SPEAKER_01 40:01

Yeah, that's wonderful. We have a video, uh TikTok of the hyperbaric chamber to link in the show notes. That's it's a really, really cool device.

SPEAKER_00 40:09

I always laugh because every time I walk by it without fail, there's like the smallest fish. And it's this huge piece of equipment.

SPEAKER_03 40:15

Little seahorse in there.

SPEAKER_00 40:17

So tiny. And it is amazing that we, you know, the level of investment for every animal, even the smallest little thing. And I'm sure it is most of our equipment is probably not super cheap to operate. You know, there's a lot of medications and things that go into it, but every animal receives the same level of care. And I so love that about the aquarium. It's amazing to see. And it's funny because, you know, I have grown up working with the animals that people see as like it needs veterinary medicine, like a sea lion or a seal. Like that is very obvious to people. And I don't think it's always very obvious to people that corals and anemones and those animals also need the same level of care. And potentially in some ways it's more challenging, because how do you get it to eat medicine if that's what it needs to do? So yeah. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 40:59

It is tricky.

SPEAKER_00 41:00

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: What's your most challenging?

SPEAKER_02 41:04

That's all we do is try and figure out how to do something that won't hurt the animal and will accomplish what we need to accomplish so it can get better.

SPEAKER_00 41:12

Aaron Ross Powell Who's the most challenging taxon of all the animals?

SPEAKER_02 41:15

Aaron Ross Powell, there are they all have their things that are tough, you know. And most of these animals are wild animals too. They're not even always very used to human interactions, not habituated to humans. So, you know, things like you would take for granted with a dog or a cat, like putting in an IV catheter and leaving it in and giving them fluids all the time. You can't you can't do that because as soon as the animal would be awake, I mean, we have to anesthetize them to even be able to work on it. As soon as they're awake, they just rip that thing right out. Like there's nothing you could do to stop that.

SPEAKER_01 41:47

No. Try to do anything to a sea otter. Yeah. Forget it. Forget it. Forget it.

SPEAKER_00 41:52

Forget it is the correct answer to try to do anything to a sea otter.

SPEAKER_02 41:55

Unless they want to do it. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:56

Which they never do. Trust me, I've spent years trying to train the sea otters to do the things our veterinarians want them to do. And they don't want to do anything.

SPEAKER_01 42:04

Hold still for an IV. No.

SPEAKER_00 42:06

Hold still is the hardest thing for a sea otter.

SPEAKER_01 42:08

They're like, I'll stop you right there. Yeah. Nothing crazy.

SPEAKER_00 42:11

But we still do it. We still have to do it, but usually under sedation, which is a little bit easier to manage with some of these animals. What are some of your mo most rewarding parts of your job?

SPEAKER_02 42:22

There's a lot. I mean, there's certainly the part of like just being able to work with unique species and have that opportunity that you wouldn't normally get. Also, I I really like fixing things. I get a lot of success out of you know being able to have a problem, not have a solution for it, have to brainstorm through that and come up with something that works. That's really gratifying. I also really like being able to provide service, like being helpful to someone. And I don't know, I guess you know, you can do a lot of service for human beings, and there's tons of people that are out there trying to help out less fortunate people. But this feels a little different. Like these animals can't get any help from anybody else, really. And so, you know, it's it's really nice to be able to provide a service for them. And and you know you're not gonna get a thank you. You know, you're not you're not gonna get any appreciation from them. So it's not like you're doing it to get some sort of reward. It's very selfless. And doing something selfless can always make you feel pretty good inside.

SPEAKER_01 43:27

Oh, I love that. That's a good answer. You're right. They're they're not really good about saying thank you. They will just poop on you instead, literally.

SPEAKER_00 43:34

And sometimes they're even more angry because you're the one who had to handle them recently. And so we work so hard to build this relationship, especially the animals that are trained and can recognize you as an individual. I'm just like, please just Shelby, come on. He's a nice guy to our veterinarian. Shelby is the harbor seal that actually really likes our veterinarians, but and specifically Dr. Adams, but it is you just try to maintain this relationship because you're like, he is helping you. You just don't understand that all of the stuff that Stresses you out is helping you. And it's hard. And it must be hard to never feel like they appreciate the things that you do.

SPEAKER_03 44:06

Right.

SPEAKER_01 44:07

But they see you coming, they're like, oh no.

SPEAKER_00 44:08

Oh no, something's happening.

SPEAKER_01 44:10

Run away.

SPEAKER_00 44:12

Yeah. Pokes aren't always that bad. Nah. Have you ever had a case where you were really unsure of how the outcome would go, or this animal seemed really bad, and just the recovery was gratifying to you? Like this case was so seemingly impossible, and this animal made a miraculous turnaround.

SPEAKER_02 44:29

Yeah, there's a few of those. I mean, I can think of a a a number of situations. I mean, we've had some injuries in some unique animals. Like we had a sawfish at one point that's rostrum got snapped. If you if you don't know what a sawfish is, it has this long beak basically coming off the front of its face. It's a shark species. And it has little teeth sticking out the sides, so that's why it's called a saw. And it's quite long. And we had one that snapped that and we had to perform procedure on it, anesthetise it, manage it, and sort of come up with a unique way to cast that or splint it so that it could be held in position while the animal healed. And I thought, like, oh, this is probably never going to work because there's so many things stacked against us. This animal isn't gonna sit still, it's not gonna lie in a bed and rest after we do this, you know, and and is this is our equipment gonna stay on underwater? And that animal pulled through and did really, really well and recovered. And so, you know, it's when those things happen, it's really great. And another one was a sea turtle that we worked on uh recently, and we had to do anesthesia on it for the procedure. And then we got to the end of the procedure, and the turtle didn't wake up. He just stayed asleep, even though he should be waking up from anesthesia. And we had to work on that animal for about 24 hours with fluids and supportive therapy and breathing for that animal before it started to breathe on its own and restabilize and then came back. And I mean that that next day when that turtle went back into his tank and was swimming and breathing on its own, it's like that was very stressful and very concerning. Because we we certainly, you know, even though we're trying to help them, we realize some of the things we do can be dangerous, can be can hurt them. We don't always know the outcome, but you know, we're always shooting for for not doing any harm to the animal as much as possible. And and when something happens or goes wrong, even unintentionally, you know, we feel a lot of pressure about that, a lot of uh sadness that like, oh, maybe, you know, I had some sort of influence over why this went sideways, and yeah, that doesn't feel good.

SPEAKER_01 46:41

With the sawfish, was that an emergency situation? Like was it something that you had to act really quick on?

SPEAKER_02 46:46

Oh, absolutely. Because not only was the the saw broken, but the way it was broken it was bitten by one of the other sharks in the tank. And so, you know, there were cuts into this rostrum as well, and it was bleeding quite profusely and you know. And if we didn't do something quickly, that would have wiggled itself loose and come off before we had a chance to get it stabilized and attached. And so yeah, we were we had to work quickly for that one, and everybody was great, the team that came together for that. Lots of people involved with animal management and handling and dealing with that animal is quite large, eight feet, you know, and quite strong enough to really injure somebody when it's thrashing around and figure out how do we take that animal and get it out of the tank, get it restrained, get it onto a table, get it anesthetized, be able to work on it, keep it alive.

SPEAKER_01 47:38

And right now. Yeah, and right now we have to do that.

SPEAKER_02 47:41

There's no time to think as soon as you possibly can get this done and then get it back into the tank so we can survive, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:48

And with like no instructions, right? Like you were the first person to have probably ever done this surgery on this.

SPEAKER_02 47:55

Oh, sure. Yeah, there was definitely some trial and error. We're like, well, we think we could do this. How can we you know we were trying to use some tubing to make the splint and stuff and then and then it was one of our assistant curators, our senior queries, that was like, hey, what if you tried using this uh epoxy stuff? And I was like, Yeah, we could try that. Let's squish it like a sandwich between two popsicle sticks to make a rigid piece that holds underwater and secure those teeth together to keep this thing straight while it heals. And yeah, it worked. Yeah, yeah. And we're out there with like an air dryer trying to get it to be warm so it would dry faster. And yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:32

Fascinating.

SPEAKER_02 48:34

A lot of just figuring it out. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 48:35

It's such a ridiculous animal to have had to do emergency. Like it is it looks kind of like a dolphin with a chainsaw around its rosha. Like that's what that's a beautiful way to describe it. Exactly. The idea of just people trying to grab this animal as it's panicking and not get thrashed by it and then doing surgery and doing something so unprecedented. You're probably the only person who has ever done sawfish surgery. That's interesting.

SPEAKER_02 48:57

No, there's others.

SPEAKER_00 48:58

Oh. The same surgery?

SPEAKER_01 48:59

Aaron Ross Powell, Jr. Not the same surgery, but we're trying to give you a pat on the back. Yeah. Just take it.

SPEAKER_02 49:05

Thank you. I can't take all the credit. I don't want anybody thinking I'm the sawfish expert. Yeah. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 49:10

You did write the protocol on how to fix a raw strip on a sawfish, though. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 49:14

Yes, pretty much.

SPEAKER_00 49:15

That's pretty cool. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:16

Now if we could only get them to have babies.

SPEAKER_00 49:18

Yeah. That's what the AI is for. And then once we put those things together, we'll have a sawfish again. Would you ever get another sawfish here?

SPEAKER_02 49:25

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 49:26

Oh. Immediately, yes. Okay. Immediately, yes.

SPEAKER_02 49:29

Yeah, they're pretty awesome. They're pretty cool.

unknown 49:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:31

Our sawfish went on to move to another AZA accredited facility for, I believe, a breeding program.

SPEAKER_02 49:36

Correct.

SPEAKER_01 49:39

She.

SPEAKER_00 49:40

She's still around?

SPEAKER_02 49:40

She is.

SPEAKER_00 49:42

Well, I feel like that is sort of a a career highlight of being able to operate on this animal and doing something so unprecedented. There are obviously huge highs to the job when things go right, but what in your experience is sort of the hardest part of your job as a veterinarian?

SPEAKER_02 49:58

I mean, I think it's like with anybody, dealing with loss or failure can be really hard. You know, you have you have both the loss of an animal that's important to you and important to the aquarium, but then also like a loss or failure for what you're trying to accomplish. And when that happens, it's kind of a double whammy and can bring you down a little bit. But uh I think over time, people in our profession and medical profession, we we sort of learn how to cope with that and get through it. And usually by the next day, there's a whole nother round of different problems that need attention. So that kind of takes your mind off of it and you get back to work and and you just make it better next time. That's all you can really do is say, like, this is this is what we tried this time, that didn't work. So what are we going to do different next time to have a better chance of success?

SPEAKER_00 50:51

Aaron Ross Powell That's a tough part of I'm sure like with any job failing at something, you're like, wow, that feels really bad. But you know, feeling sort of that double-edged sword of it was both things now, and now I feel like there's this animal loss. It must be really tough.

SPEAKER_02 51:04

There's so many things that are out of control, out of uh personal control in that situation. You know, the animal's doing what it's doing, the people are doing what they're doing, the there's the whole water situation and the uniqueness of those animals and managing them. There's there's a lot of things that can go wrong each time, and you can't accept the responsibility or blame for every single making sure that every single one of those things is perfect.

SPEAKER_00 51:27

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: I feel like it's also that situation. I feel like there are so many aspects of like if an animal is showing a disease process, you might not know how advanced that is. You might not know all the details of what other things it's got going on at the same time. And then I feel like our staff relies so heavily on our veterinarians, and I hope that you never feel like it's a failure to us if an animal passes, because we totally understand that life is life and death is part of life as well. And these things happen. And I feel like our entire vet team does such a wonderful job of being supportive and responding in an emergency and being there for us when something is going on with our animals. And sometimes the correct answer for some animals that aren't going to get better is also euthanasia. And although that sounds like it would be the hardest part of the job, sometimes those decisions actually relieve a lot of weight from our staff. And we appreciate you being there for guiding those decisions as well.

SPEAKER_02 52:17

Aaron Ross Powell Yeah. Those decisions are tricky always because you're conflicted with wanting to, you know, fix whatever the problem is, make it better, but at the same time, you're like, I don't know. Uh it's not always like, can you do it? We also have to consider like, should we do it? Is this is a process that's gonna happen for this animal in its best interest and its best welfare, because we don't we don't want to make an animal have suffering. That's one of the things as a a veterinarian, we take an oath to try and prevent that. And so we want to try and make sure that what we're doing, you know, if if it's short term or something that animal's gonna get past and worth what it's gonna have to get go through to get there, then you know, we can do that. But sometimes a better decision is to let them go.

SPEAKER_01 53:04

Yeah. Very hard decision to make.

SPEAKER_00 53:06

Well, thank you. I feel like what it oddly did not mean to make it a sad interview. But I do think it's it's pertinent information that, you know, animal care is changing. I'm sure veterinary medicine is sort of changing in kind or right alongside how animal care is operating. And it's been cool to watch both things sort of evolve over even the course of my short career that I've worked here. I've seen a lot of advances and I've seen people think a little bit differently about how some of those decisions are made too, and be a little bit more open to euthanasia as a more humane option as opposed to, you know, like extensive treatment. And a part of my growing up at in animal care was realizing that there is a limit to what we should do, and that there is euthanasia is a helpful and a nice option for animals sometimes at the end of their life.

SPEAKER_02 53:53

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Sure, it is. It's a big part of relieving animal suffering is the ability to do that in a fast and relatively painless way. You know, that's that's much better for them if we think about it from a welfare standpoint than you know going through a slower process of death.

SPEAKER_00 54:10

Aaron Ross Powell or something that's not controlled. On that very sad note, I was wondering if Edelyn wanted to kind of approach some of our questions from social media.

SPEAKER_01 54:19

Aaron Powell Yeah, we have just a couple. I feel like we hit a lot of them. But maybe some challenges of working with aquatic animals versus terrestrial, the differences between them. Any off the top of your head?

SPEAKER_02 54:30

Aaron Ross Powell Well, I mean, yeah, certainly we have we have to keep the aquatic ones wet, although we do have we do have air-breathing aquatic animals, the mammals, and then also water breathers, which I love them most of all.

SPEAKER_00 54:44

But um, no offense, mammals.

SPEAKER_02 54:48

But yeah, that that's a big difference. And then you know, they have they have different adaptations for where they live that we all have we have to pay attention to, whether it's reptiles who, you know, they're they're cold-blooded instead of warm-blooded uh sorefish and the invertebrates that we work on and such. So we have to adapt to those sorts of things. Their physiology is a lot different. We don't always have a guidebook to that. We have to extrapolate from what we do know, get information from biology resources and stuff, and sort of say, like, well, we think this is how this is gonna go. There's that, and then just dealing with big animals or very sensitive animals where it's like, oh, don't handle it too much because that's enough to put it into shock and have it expire. And so then how do we come up with a situation where we can work with it carefully, you know, wearing gloves, keeping it in water, relieving weight stress, you know, a a lot of different things.

SPEAKER_01 55:42

What's an animal that's pretty prone to shock birds?

SPEAKER_02 55:46

There's birds, definitely. You know, especially ones that are not habituated to humans. I mean, the minute they're entrapped, they go into this really heavy fright or flight response and it's just get away at all costs. You know, so they're gonna struggle and fight and their heart rate goes way up, and and so you have to be cognizant of that when you're working on them and you know, either take steps to avoid that or condition them originally so they're more comfortable. But yeah, a lot of times we have to take breaks with the animals and come back to things later just so that they uh they don't get overwhelmed.

SPEAKER_01 56:20

Timeout.

SPEAKER_02 56:21

Yeah. Like we said, they they don't know we're trying to help them. They think we're trying to eat them or especially if they're already injured or sick.

SPEAKER_00 56:28

They're like, I'm very vulnerable right now. Please don't come over here.

SPEAKER_01 56:32

I wish you could just tell them. We're here to help. With our internships and our fellows, et cetera, what is your responsibility in teaching them?

SPEAKER_02 56:40

Yeah, so I mean, with the job as a veterinarian at the aquarium, really training and teaching other individuals isn't pr a primary part of that job. It does it's not part of animal care, making sure the collection is healthy and safe. But, you know, we all want to give back to our profession. We want to help the next generation start off in a better place than we started off as far as our knowledge base and experience and things like that. So we do have programs here at the aquarium for training opportunities for students in veterinary medicine. And we don't charge for that. You know, they they come here and they're taking time out of their school schedule to learn and they it would be considered volunteers with us. And we have programs currently for undergraduate students. We offer two training positions every year in the summer when they would be out of school. And we train them in the basics, just basically to see so they can decide, you know, oh, do I do I like this part of veterinary medicine and w, you know, is this something that I would want to pursue more later? And not as much teaching them about the specifics of how we're treating the animals and things like that. And then we have veterinary students that are in their third or fourth year of veterinary school that are coming through on two or three-week rotations who want to learn, you know, these special things. How do we hold these animals correctly? How do we, you know, deal with their special uniqueness to be able to provide veterin to them? And it's great here, they get a lot of hands-on experience. We we put them right into the mix as soon as they feel comfortable with giving injections and tube feeding animals, even doing surgery if it's something that they've already been trained on how to do in school. So it's it's a pretty cool program. We also train postgraduate veterinarians as part of a UC Davis Aquatic Animal Fellowship program. It's a one-year program. And that individual has graduated from veterinary school, wants to do more training in aquariums, and gets to rotate through UC Davis and their aquatic animal health program there, Steinhardt Aquarium, and here at the Aquarium of the Pacific.

SPEAKER_00 58:45

Aaron Powell It's pretty cool. I'm watching our most recent fellow going through, and number one, I was very happy because she fell in love with frogs in the time Dee was here. And she was like, wow, I really want to get into amphibian medicine. I was like, thank goodness. That's just the way to your heart. Yeah, it really was. But it was cool watching her sort of from you know day one, where she was kind of obviously is a veterinarian very qualified, but learning and absorbing this information to sort of the final days of her fellowship where she was very much a part of care and practice and you know doing treatments and going around. And it was really cool to watch even that level of growth in just a few months, and especially in the amphibian area.

SPEAKER_02 59:23

Instead of like standing back with big eyes like, uh, then they're in the in the mix there, like, I can do that, I can help with that, I know what you need next. Let's do this.

SPEAKER_00 59:30

And helping to make decisions that sometimes were tougher decisions to make, too. It was cool to watch just her feel more enabled over the course of her fellowship.

SPEAKER_01 59:37

So it's amazing. I'm gonna add more information about that in our show notes. So if you're more interested in learning more, that'll be in our episode description. Do you have a favorite animal here? Like an individual or a species of animal? Both both.

SPEAKER_02 59:50

Okay. So I really like sea turtles. They're great patients, and they're pretty cool animals, and they're really cute and super unique. So they're probably my favorite species of animal that we have at the aquarium. And then, gosh, I could go down the list. I've I have some special animals that I really, you know, have some attachment to. Yeah. So we have um one of the birds in our program collection, Colola. It's a sulfur-crested cockatoo, and we have a really good uh relationship. I don't know why. I don't know, I'm not exactly certain because I definitely have worked on this bird a lot. But yeah, it is and it and it's great because the relate that relationship like makes me be able to provide treatment to that animal so much easier without stress. I mean, it's great. Like he he's like, oh, if you scratch my head and play with my feathers, fine, give me the injection. I don't care. You know, so so that's really nice. Uh if that that's one of those things like that animal actually like makes you feel like there's some gratitude back.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:54

That's one of the only ones. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:56

Yeah, there's not that many.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:57

He does say I love you too. I'm sure that helps.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:59

It does. It does. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:01

But he is a fussy animal with a lot of people. And so if Lola likes you, you're in. You know, like he does, I think he likes like three total people. And we even tried to have him on the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:11

He's been our only animal guest, but you wouldn't know it because he just keep silent the whole time. We should have brought you. Yeah, that should have been, yeah, now we know. This should have been a combo X um episode. But we should have interviewed Lola.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:24

So what is it like? He probably would have said something, to be honest. It is so cute to just see this animal who can be a little bit unpredictable and a little bit maybe fractious with some people. You know, like he has his moments where he is still a cockatoo at the end of the day. And then I guess, you know, coming into treatments, someone, one of our aviculturists, was like, you know, he was being so fussy with me this morning, Dr. Adams had to go in and give him an injection, and he was just sitting in there petting him.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:52

Yeah. So it's cool to see. And then some other animals I love just because of like who they are, not so much what they do with me. And that's how like what the relationship with Shelby is. Like Shelby is one of our older harbor seals, and she's just so great. Like she's tolerated so much. She, you know, still is coming up and will do interactions with me, even though, you know, I've I've been a negative reinforcer on her with all the medical care that she's gotten. And the best thing about her that I really like, I mean, she was just such a good mom to her pups. And like seeing that happen and having her raise those pups and just be so dedicated, like that that really endeared her to me. So I think, yeah, for our marine mammals, she's probably one of the special ones for me.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:36

Mama Shelby.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:38

She's a good one.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:39

I like them all.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:40

Do you have a favorite of our sea turtles? That was asked.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:43

Of our sea turtles? No, they're kind of oh, they're almost identical. Like Louie, Lou and Theo, they're the same age from the same clutch. And they're like almost identical. Yeah, I wouldn't say I had to like I like one of those more than the others. You know, Copper, Lou, and Theo. They're they're all in there. Some of the stranded ones that come in are, you know, I get rooting for them because they all got an uphill battle.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:06

Yeah. I wanted to end on that, our current projects, um, one of them being turtle rehabilitation and releasing wild sea turtles. We actually just released one last week, a loggerhead sea turtle. And then we have we're gonna release another one next next week. Tuesday, right? Um Tuesday. So stay tuned for that. This episode will come out after we release those animals. But we're actually going to be building a space to house these rehabilitated animals near the Malina Animal Care Center, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:33

Yeah, so this is a cool project that we're doing. It's not a real big build-out for the aquarium, it's a smaller project, but it's something that's gonna be very useful for us. We've been rehabilitating sea turtles uh a couple years after the aquarium opened. So in about 2000, I think we got our first rehab sea turtle in. And really at that time it was kind of like, hey, we have this live stranded sea turtle that's obviously not doing well. What can we do with it? And they're like, well, let's try the aquarium. And we were like, yeah, and and then the government agencies who manage sea turtles in the wild were gave us permission to do that. And uh that started off the relationship. And since then, I think we've, you know, had probably close to 50 sea turtles in. Oh wow. And about thirty-five of them released back out into the wild. And it's been a good program. It it can be challenging from time to time because when they do come in, we don't we're not prepared for it. We don't have any warning. And so we have to make room for them because we can't put them in with our other animals because of either compatibility issues or for medical reasons. Like we don't want to expose our existing animal sea turtle collection to diseases that could be coming in with a sick sea turtle. And we also don't want to expose the wild turtle that's gonna go back out into the wild to any diseases that our animals might be carrying but not showing any symptoms of. And so we don't want to have that cross-contamination at all and avoid that. So, you know, we have to juggle things around to make space for those animals. And sea turtles don't always rehabilitate very quickly. Since they are cool, cold-blooded, they do take a long time to heal and recover. So we might I'd say on average, a sea turtle rehab for us when they come in can be anywhere from like two to four months. And then a long one might be a year or more in recovery. So that ties up a system for a long time. And also our tanks are designed for other purposes, different types of animals, not specifically for working on sea turtles, which can get quite heavy, you know, 140, 150 pounds easily. And so we just received a grant in 2023 and started working on the project in 2024 from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and NOAA. And they had funds set aside to support grant funding to support projects that involve building capacity or helping care for sea turtles that strand on the west coast of the United States. So we applied for that grant and were accepted. We got uh grant to help put in a dedicated sea turtle rehabilitation tank pool here at the aquarium of the Pacific. And so that'll be set there for turtles whenever they come in. We'll have a space. We can immediately say, yes, of course we can take that animal. We have space. It'll about double our capacity. Nice. If if we still have more sea turtles than that tank will hold, we still have the capacity of the rest of the aquarium that we can still try and bring them in. So it doesn't exclusively mean we can only put turtles in that tank. We can still keep doing what we have been doing, but it it definitely gives us more resources and more ability. And sometimes the turtles management can be quite expensive. So the program is a lot to maintain. Not only do we have to have the place to keep them in the habitat and the water and the food, but their medical care could range anything from a small surgery to like remove a hook from their mouth or from their throat all the way to going to get a CT scan or an MRI to check to see if they have pneumonia because we can't see inside their lungs or a surgery. We had a turtle that came in this year that was hit by a boat and had an injury to its head had some skull fractures and we took it in to have a board certified surgeon do the repair of that. So the program yeah it's really nice now that we're going to have a program and a tank all together that supports sea turtle rehabilitation specifically. Yeah. Instead of us just trying to have to scramble and make do with what we what we have.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:28

Amazing. I forgot one more question I wanted to ask you and it was have you ever had to stay overnight at the aquarium to either do a procedure or come in overnight, anything like that?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:38

Aaron Ross Powell Yeah there's been a couple of instances. It doesn't happen a lot. We also don't get called in on emergencies all that often but when we do we're available and my office is set up with a makeshift reclining chair slash cot that can be pulled out and we can stay overnight if we need to. But we had to manage a patomelon if you don't know what that is it's a little type of wallaby looking creature that we had here many, many years ago and he had uh injured his arm and required round the clock management and care to keep him safe and protected while he was healing. And so we had shifts round the clock for that. And so yeah we definitely had to be here overnight. Some of the sea otters that we get in the little orphan sea otters require 24 hour monitoring and care, feeding all through the night, drying cleaning that sort of thing. So far that hasn't necessarily been a veterinary thing because those luckily have been pretty healthy and managed well so we haven't had to come in for them yet but it will happen. And then I also remember I came in and was here a lot the first night after Shelby the harbor seal we were talking about before she had her eye surgery. She needed pretty much constant monitoring to make sure that her condition was okay. And so yeah I mean I was here all night. I actually didn't sleep that much that night here on call but you know checking on her frequently and going in and administering her medicine it just happened to be a cool cold night and we had the heater on out there and it was raining it was not an ideal situation for us as humans. But but Shelby did really good.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:14

Yeah she's a champ. And she can see now and she can see it all right rain or shine morning or night you're always here for the animals. Amazing well thank you Dr. Adams for doing our podcast again or second time if just the first time anyone else is hearing it. So maybe we'll come back on one day.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:30

Yeah thank you very much for having me and I just wanted to say it's I I have a lot of gratitude and I'm very grateful for being able to work with these really cool animals and have a job here at the aquarium. It's been a real treat.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:42

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:48

Aquarium of the Pacific is brought to you by Aquarium of the Pacific, a 501c3 nonprofit organization.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:54

Keep up with the aquarium on social media at Aquarium Pacific on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:00

This podcast is produced by Aaron Lundy and Madeline Walden. Our music is by Andrew Reitzma and our podcast art is by Brandy Kenny. Special thanks to Cecile Fisher, Anitsa Viez, our audiovisual and education departments and our amazing podcast guests for taking time out of their day to talk about the important work that they do.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:18

Podcific is impossible without the support of the aquarium's donors, members, guests and supporters thanks so much for listening