“I’ve had memorable moments where a barracuda’s face ends up firmly fixed in my mind,” says Russ Kerr, Canada Research Chair in Marine Natural Products at the University of Prince Edward Island. But things with teeth aren’t actually at the heart of his marine science research. Rather, “We’re looking to discover novel natural products in the sea and make medicine from them. And to develop production methods that are ecologically sound for the marine environment. It is clearly of fundamental importance to human health to discover new therapeutic agents. “My interest in the marine environment didn’t really develop until I was doing my post-doc at Stanford,” says the Scottish-born Kerr. “Being there opened my eyes to the field. I had very lab-based scientific training in Calgary before that, but working with Carl Djerassi...

“They call me grandfather fish,” laughs Gerry Johnson. “Fish had started to evolve as a farmed species in Canada, and AVC was advertising for someone to set up its aquatic side. I applied for it and got the job,” says the veterinary pathologist who is now chair of AVC’s Department of Pathology and Microbiology. He remembers arriving at AVC in 1986. “There were a bunch of holes in the ground and a roof over the top, and that was about it for aquatics. But the engineers had listened to all the different interest groups, and once we got the place equipped and operational we found we had landed in probably the best facility in the world at the time. We could run four seasons of temperature in a single experiment in those tanks. We had the potential to do things that couldn’t be done elsewhere and it’s been evolving ever since. “It was...

Lobsters are aquatic, yet you can take them out of water and they’ll survive for three days if you keep them moist and cool. They’re invertebrates with an exoskeleton. They can live to be 100 years old. And the biggest can weigh as much as a five-year-old child. “They’re so different from everything you learn in vet school, yet they are still animals,” says Jean Lavallée, Clinical Scientist at the AVC Lobster Science Centre. And they are worth a lot of money, and a lot of jobs. Found along the east coast from North Carolina to Labrador, annual landings in Canada total more than 45,000 tonnes, with a landing value of more than three-quarters of a billion dollars. Over 9,000 people work as lobster fishers. Lobster is the most valuable seafood product in Canada. Yet Lavallée, who has a graduate degree in lobster health, is one of only...

We’re all familiar with blood tests at the doctor’s office. That’s one of the things Andrea Battison does in her lab. Except she does them for lobsters. “Part of my training as a clinical pathologist is to interpret blood test results and try to discern what kind of disease process is happening,” explains the research scientist at the AVC’s Lobster Science Centre. “We’re trying to find out if there are measurable indicators in the hemolymph or lobster blood which will be indicative of a certain disease state or damage to a body system.” She brings a unique skill set to her role. A veterinarian by training, she is also a Board-certified clinical pathologist who did her PhD focusing on different ways to evaluate hemolymph to determine the health status of the lobster.   “Up until now, a lot of the work on lobsters has been...

Spencer Greenwood is the Lobster Science Centre’s CSI guy. His science—molecular biology, parasitology, lobster pathogens, and host-pathogen interactions—deals with stuff you can’t see even with a simple microscope. Like genes. But the aim is simple, even if the science isn’t. “We are developing a library of genes that are expressed from parasites infecting lobster.” The creation of a library or database of expressed genes has provided clues into how the parasite may actually cause disease in lobsters. They find genes that may code for proteins involved in attachment of the parasite to the lobster, how it invades the tissue, and possibly how it eventually kills the lobster. “We want to see genes that the parasite ‘turns on’ during infection. We thought it might be using an enzyme to actually penetrate the carapace, but work...

Asked how a kid who studied physics in the Australian outback ended up doing large animal surgery in Prince Edward Island, Chris Riley laughs and says, “I had an unexpected life. “I was the only boy in my town to finish high school to grade 12 that year,” he says. “And when I was done I was told all the things I couldn’t be. But after serving in the Royal Australian Air Force for three-and-a-half years, where I took physics and aerodynamic engineering, I decided I could do whatever I wanted.” And that was to become what he’d wanted since he was a boy: to be a veterinarian. When he was small, he would often stay with his grandfather for holidays. “He had horses and cows and I just liked being around them and dogs.” He helped put himself through veterinary school by running a weekend pet crematorium and serving as an animal...

Leigh Lamont knocks out animals for a living. But, says the Associate Professor of Anaesthesiology in the Department of Companion Animals at AVC, “As I got into clinical practice I realized there were a lot of questions about how we manage cases, and how we handle the health of our patients, which we just didn’t have good answers to. Many interventions or treatments were done because we had a sense that something could or should work, rather than being based on sound science. Veterinary medicine has suffered for many years from a lack of appreciation of the importance of evidence-based medicine. That became of interest to me.” With a specific research interest in anaesthesia and pain management, Lamont undertakes smaller, finite projects. “The field of pain management is relatively new to veterinary medicine,” says Lamont, and veterinarians and pet-...

Some people do not take Michael Cockram’s type of research seriously. According to the soft-spoken Englishman, at one time “it was ridiculed in the farming and veterinary press. Who, after all, needs to know what it takes for a sheep to lose its balance and fall over in a livestock vehicle?” Quite a lot of people, it turns out: from farmer and truck driver and slaughterhouse to processor and consumer. In Canada, there are relatively few people involved in animal welfare research which uses applied science—such as behaviour and physiology—to indirectly assess mental experiences in animals. “The role of animal welfare research is to provide a critical and systematic analysis of issues and a framework that can be used to provide the best available answers to practical and ethical questions,” says the new Chair in Animal Welfare at the AVC Sir...

“When I did my veterinary degree in Kenya we never used to learn about aquatic stuff. It was rarely taught. But,” says Collins Kamunde, “when I did my postgraduate work, I found myself interested in aquatics and ended up studying aquatic physiology and toxicology. Deep inside, this is what I wanted to do.” A year’s NSERC-funded industrial postdoctoral fellowship in British Columbia further refined the expertise he brought to AVC in January 2004, where he is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences. His NSERC- and CFI-funded research—“looking at the relative importance of water versus food as uptake vectors for metals in indigenous aquatic organisms” —is a crucial signpost in monitoring our surroundings and helping to frame regulations to protect them. “My work is important, as it takes a short time...

About 91 per cent of halibut are right-eyed. “They start off as a larval fish with eyes on both sides of their head,” says Larry Hammell, “and then they go through a metamorphosis where one eye migrates over the top of their head so they have both eyes on one side and they swim on their sides.” But, says the Professor in the Department of Health Management, when the eye is only partially migrated, or goes missing altogether,  “The fish have higher mortality and much poorer growth.”  He can tell you that because his AVC team went into a hatchery in the spring of 2006 and micro-chipped just over 5,000 individual fish. “We monitored their eyes, their pigmentation, and a number of other factors.” It’s one small part of Hammell’s efforts over the years to create an adaptable, ongoing, and standardized record of...

“I conduct research associated with the non-governmental organization called Farmers Helping Farmers”, says John VanLeeuwen, a Professor of Epidemiology and Ruminant Health Management at AVC. VanLeeuwen is president of the farmers’ aid group. It’s an award-winning organization of community-minded PEI people with agricultural backgrounds whose goal is to directly assist Kenyan farmers in boosting their food production and quality of life. Each year for the past five years, he has worked with a dairy farmer co-op in Kenya “to help them fight disease in their cattle and increase milk production and other measures of productivity. The research varies from baseline epidemiological surveys of current status, to evaluation of benefits of our actions, to clinical trials to determine efficacy of new product applications. What is novel is that we have incorporated...

The “Dragon Lady” did it for Jeff Davidson. “I didn’t live near the sea. I grew up near the bush in northern Ontario. Maybe it was Jacques Cousteau and all that—but my original interest was in marine biology. I never even touched a cow until I was 18. One day, in my second year at Guelph, I asked one of my professors, a formidable character we called the Dragon Lady, what my job prospects would be if I continued on in marine biology. She said if I did really well and got an honours degree or a graduate degree I’d be able to work for her. And I thought, ‘that’s it.’ That’s when I decided I was going to be a veterinarian.” His early career was mostly private practice, and mostly large animal. “But in the late 1970s when everybody was going west—same as they are now—I decided I was going east to take a...

“I don’t do test tubes,” says Etienne Côté. “I’m a clinical researcher. I want to translate information directly to helping patients, to doing things that mean something to individual owners, and for pets that are thought by their veterinarians to have heart problems.” He’s felt that way for quite a while. “I knew I wanted to be James Herriot,” laughs the cardiologist and internal medicine specialist. “I always had a dog and a cat around when I was growing up in Montreal. I’m a city guy but I remember keeping health report cards for my guinea pig—things like that. And, of course, reading Herriot when I was about 10. That pretty much sealed it. I was hardcore set to get into veterinary school when I left home, first to Rutgers for animal science and then to Cornell. “I thought I needed some large...