Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Let the Necropsies Begin
6/4/2006
Here is an awesome picture of the pumice creek camp taken from the air. It's a really nice setup, planes can land right on the gravel (you can see the tracks), the creek is close, and there's lots of room to pitch tents (my tent is the first one to the right of the cabin). There were 10 of us altoghether, but only 4 bunks in the cabin. So two people stayed in the cabin, and the rest of us stayed in tents. Like I said earlier, it's really a state trooper cabin, and they are nice enough to let us use it for this project.
We had lots of "luxuries" while out in the field. We had a pump to move water into a holding tank behind the cabin, which was hooked into plumbing for the shower and sinks. The water didn't get filtered, but it was fine for taking showers and doing dishes. We had two large Nalgene filters for drinking and cooking water. We also had a generator to run the plumbing and lights in the cabin. So after meals when we needed to do dishes, or when someone wanted to take a shower we could just crank the generator on. While we did have a shower, it really wasn't very nice (or warm), so it didn't get used very much.
This was the day we really got started on necropsies. We had planned on necropsying 7 North Alaska Peninsula adults, and 8 Mulchatna adults throughout the trip.
We were very hesitant to euthanize any animals from the NAP herd since they are in such decline (the herd has gone from 20,000 animals in the mid '80's to 1,200 now), but if we can't figure out what is causing the decline we can't help them recover. To have the least impact on the population, we selected 3 sickly looking bulls to necropsy (to leave all of the breeding females alone).
So what would happen is that Kimberlee and Lem would go out in the helicopter and find a group of caribou and pick a bull out that was sickly (very skinny, lagging behind, coughing, etc.), and Lem would shoot it (in the neck so it would die very quickly). The two of them would stay with the animal and draw blood and begin measuring and skinning it. The helicopter would come back to camp (which was never very far away) and pick up Nikki and I, and bring us to the site to do the necropsy.
While Kimberlee, Nikki, and I were doing the necropsies, Lem and the helicopter pilot would butcher the meat so that it could be donated to local villages (where a majority of the people live off of subsistence hunting and fishing).
Here is a picture of one of the three necropsies that day. It just happened to be a really nice day (which was not the case most of the time), and you can see the Aleutian Mountains in the background. (That's me with the blue shirt and hat)
I'm not sure which necropsy this was, but two of the three animals that we did that day had a lot of parasites (nasal bots, echinococcus, taenia, sarcocystis, ostertagia, warbles, and rumen flukes), and one had lesions consistent with pneumonia.
We collected full sample sets on each of the animals (which took about an hour and a half each). We collected tissues for microbiologic culture, toxicology, parasitology, and histopathology.
When we were done we all flew back to camp and started working on the blood from each of the animals. I made smears for differentials and reticulocyte counts, did hematocrits and total proteins, and did manual red and white blood cell counts. Nikki spun the serum and trace mineral tubes down and aliquoted serum and plasma out for various serologic and toxicologic assays.
This is where my particular project comes in. I am taking 0.5 mL of whole blood from each animal to do cholinesterase levels on.
So we had a really busy day, and we were up pretty late, but we got a lot done. I was so tired that I didn't even hear Jim's plane land after midnight when he got to camp.
Here is an awesome picture of the pumice creek camp taken from the air. It's a really nice setup, planes can land right on the gravel (you can see the tracks), the creek is close, and there's lots of room to pitch tents (my tent is the first one to the right of the cabin). There were 10 of us altoghether, but only 4 bunks in the cabin. So two people stayed in the cabin, and the rest of us stayed in tents. Like I said earlier, it's really a state trooper cabin, and they are nice enough to let us use it for this project.
We had lots of "luxuries" while out in the field. We had a pump to move water into a holding tank behind the cabin, which was hooked into plumbing for the shower and sinks. The water didn't get filtered, but it was fine for taking showers and doing dishes. We had two large Nalgene filters for drinking and cooking water. We also had a generator to run the plumbing and lights in the cabin. So after meals when we needed to do dishes, or when someone wanted to take a shower we could just crank the generator on. While we did have a shower, it really wasn't very nice (or warm), so it didn't get used very much.
This was the day we really got started on necropsies. We had planned on necropsying 7 North Alaska Peninsula adults, and 8 Mulchatna adults throughout the trip.We were very hesitant to euthanize any animals from the NAP herd since they are in such decline (the herd has gone from 20,000 animals in the mid '80's to 1,200 now), but if we can't figure out what is causing the decline we can't help them recover. To have the least impact on the population, we selected 3 sickly looking bulls to necropsy (to leave all of the breeding females alone).
So what would happen is that Kimberlee and Lem would go out in the helicopter and find a group of caribou and pick a bull out that was sickly (very skinny, lagging behind, coughing, etc.), and Lem would shoot it (in the neck so it would die very quickly). The two of them would stay with the animal and draw blood and begin measuring and skinning it. The helicopter would come back to camp (which was never very far away) and pick up Nikki and I, and bring us to the site to do the necropsy.
While Kimberlee, Nikki, and I were doing the necropsies, Lem and the helicopter pilot would butcher the meat so that it could be donated to local villages (where a majority of the people live off of subsistence hunting and fishing).
Here is a picture of one of the three necropsies that day. It just happened to be a really nice day (which was not the case most of the time), and you can see the Aleutian Mountains in the background. (That's me with the blue shirt and hat)I'm not sure which necropsy this was, but two of the three animals that we did that day had a lot of parasites (nasal bots, echinococcus, taenia, sarcocystis, ostertagia, warbles, and rumen flukes), and one had lesions consistent with pneumonia.
We collected full sample sets on each of the animals (which took about an hour and a half each). We collected tissues for microbiologic culture, toxicology, parasitology, and histopathology.
When we were done we all flew back to camp and started working on the blood from each of the animals. I made smears for differentials and reticulocyte counts, did hematocrits and total proteins, and did manual red and white blood cell counts. Nikki spun the serum and trace mineral tubes down and aliquoted serum and plasma out for various serologic and toxicologic assays.
This is where my particular project comes in. I am taking 0.5 mL of whole blood from each animal to do cholinesterase levels on.
So we had a really busy day, and we were up pretty late, but we got a lot done. I was so tired that I didn't even hear Jim's plane land after midnight when he got to camp.
