Playing Scientist for a Day!

I have long wondered just what goes on behind the closed doors and quarantine signs that surround the South Beach facility. So when Dr Jo-Ann Mellish invited me to come and 'help process' our last batch of juvenile Steller sealions, my curiosity overcame my natural trepidation about being in a laboratory again... for those of you who are used to laboratories and can't understand why anyone would find them "places of angst" skip ahead...

Flashback #1 - somewhere in a laboratory in the bowels of the University of Canberra circa 1977

... My biology partner (Dub Mundy) and I were taking apart and then cleaning up an entire lab, test tube by test tube as we hunted for 7 hours (yes count em) for an escaped tiger snake. Dub was blaming me for not closing the aquarium lid! - I blamed him for choosing such a venomous snake to study!... needless to say we never found the snake and failed that exercise...

So there I was in a lab again after many years, in my blue coveralls, extra tuffs and latex gloves hoping that nothing as eventful as a SSL escape would occur and that I could actually avoid the sight of blood being drawn...

Flashback #2 - in the belly of a Red Cross laboratory somewhere in Jakarta circa 2003
... The Bali bombing had just happened and I was giving a pint of my B- blood (a rarity in Asia) every few days to help victims - one particularly memorable day it took 8 attempts to find the vein... it may have been more but I lost count after passing out the second time...

As we awaited our first SSL into the lab at South Beach we were well briefed, and the equipment was checked and rechecked but I was still a tad apprehensive about what might unfold. Clearly this team was well prepared but could they handle all eventualities? Would this really be the "routine procedure" we were hoping for? Would the team achieve the ambitious goals Jo has set for them?

As it turned out, YES to all of the above.

Reminiscent of a well rehearsed Formula One pit crew, Megan Peterson, John Skinner (thanks for the pix John), Mandy Keogh, Justin Jenniges and Jane Belovarac, under the guidance and watchful eyes of maestros Pam Tuomi and Jo-Ann Mellish, delivered a text book series of procedures on each of the juvenile sea lions. From the moment they were enticed into the trolley cage through the anaesthesia stage until the final blood draw and their return to feed and play showing no post operative stress, there was never a hint of concern despite the inherent risks of aggressive and nervous animals being in such close proximity to staff, the use of complex and sensitive equipment and the inevitable challenges of performing all procedures in accordance with strict IACUC guidelines and keeping track of the extensive lab data and voluminous reports that must accompany every analysis... oh yes - and they had promised Nancy that I'd be done by noon!

The process was way more complex than a simple pit stop!

The closest analogy I could think of was that I was watching a Discovery Channel mini series of a hospital emergency room providing diagnosis and treatment for the same six problems on six different special needs patients sequentially... all in a four hour stretch with no commercials (although there were a few mini chocolate and coffee breaks)!! Maybe we could pitch such this series to Discovery?

Impressive is an understatement.

Any flashbacks I have from this day will clearly be a positive counterbalance to my previous laboratory experiences - - thank you juvenile SSL research team for restoring my scientific faith!