Charlottetown, it's been a blast!

The lighthouse at Rocky Point, in front of Fort Amherst.

So the time has come for me to leave Charlottetown.. and what a great time I've had. I have learnt so much, and I am excited to take my new found skills back to the UK to start testing my samples.

I wish I had longer, there is still a lot of stuff that needs optimising when I'm back in Swansea, but it will be better to do it in my own lab with my own facilities - I have a nice big shopping list so I'm not sure how Andrew, my supervisor, is going to feel once I'm back, heheee.

Renee has 'mid-terms' (exams) starting this week, so she took me on a few adventures last weekend so that I could explore the island a bit more, and we had a fantastic time. First of all we visited the 'Argyle Shore', which is part of Prince Edward Islands Provincial Park (sort of like the UK's National Parks... I think), and then Port-la-Joye—Fort Amherst, a National Historic Site of Canada, at a place called Rocky Point, which overlooks Charlottetown Harbour. I learnt about the colonisation of the Island, from the Mi'kmaq natives, to the French settlers from Fortress Louisbourg in Nova Scotia, who called the point Port-la-Joye until the invasion of the British, when it was renamed Fort Amherst. It's a pretty sad story, and there is a memorial there for everyone who died during the battles. 

Being a tourist at the Argyle Shore.

I made a massive mistake when booking my flights - turns out that today (Monday) is Canadian Thanksgiving, so nobody was in work, and I fly to Boston tomorrow evening, which means, I've had an extra long weekend just to wait for a flight out of here, doh!

Either way, it's quite cool that I've been able to experience thanksgiving here, and on Saturday night I was invited over to Spencer's house for dinner and met his family - his wife, Diane, their two dogs, and two cats. The cats were huge tabby british shorthairs, my FAVOURITE, and anyone who knows me, knows I am definitely a cat lover. They were so cute I just wanted to take them home! Turns out that Spencer is also a very accomplished artist, and I got to see some of his wonderful creations - my favourite had to be the pop art lobsters in his living room, you can see some of his work here.

Saying goodbye to my mate John.

We had lobster (yay!) and cilantro (coriander) salsa, along with all sort of yummy things topped off with pumpkin pie, which is amazing and apparently what everyone has at thanksgiving over here - I need to learn to cook it once I'm home!

I have spent the remainder of the weekend doing a little bit more walking, and getting some pictures of my favourite landmarks... including a statue downtown of Canada's first prime minister, Sir. John A. Macdonald, which is on the corner of Victoria Row (walking street) and Queen Street in 'downtown' Charlottetown - my favourite area here (and yes, Dr. AFJ, if you're reading this, that side profile is for you).

Gahan ale. No funny faces.

This past week has been a bit crazy, rushing to get things finished and set ready for when I leave tomorrow. I realise I am doing this post in no particular order, starting with the weekend and working backwards?! On Friday, I was lucky enough to have a tour of the Charlottetown Aquatic Animal Pathogen and Biocontainment Laboratory, a level 3 government run facility (much like Cefas in the UK), which is able to work with hi-risk aquatic animal pathogens involving in vivo (live animal) and in vitro research and testing. The lab is part of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency laboratory, which mainly looks at potato crop diseases (PEI is famous for it's potatoes). Dr. Phil Byrne, who is section head at CAAPBL, showed me their facilities where recent research involves diagnostic test development for a crustacean viral disease (WSSV). There were lots of doors and lots of clothes changes, and definitely no photos. Sorry!

Lyndsay, my host, has gone home to Toronto for thanksgiving so Reneé and I went out to dinner last night. She has told me that I NEED to try the local Gahan ales before I leave, which are brewed on the island, below a restaurant, 'The Gahan House'. Beer makes me do a funny face, so I wasn't sure how well it was going to go, but I had a fantastic meal, a pint of beer, and thoroughly enjoyed it!

I am sat here procrastinating. My suitcase is half packed but I am still in my yoga pants, and need to make dinner. This time tomorrow I'll be in Boston... but first I need to go to the lab and say goodbye to my collaborators. Charlottetown, I'm gonna miss you!

Goodbye Charlottetown!

UPDATE: So it's my last day here at the university, and it wouldn't be the same without having a couple of photos with Spencer in the lab! Thanks for everything guys!

Professor Greenwood and I.

Losing my (lobster eating) virginity, and other adventures...

Look who's going in the pot!

So, I did it.. I came to Canada and I ate a lobster.. a real (almost) live, whole lobster and.. I liked it. I think. With the help of my house mate Renee, we cooked and ate the lobsters I had taken home from the lab the day before (no, they weren't 'contaminated' or 'sick', before anyone decides to publish a newspaper article on it!). Apparently the best way to eat lobster is with a little bread, and a lot of butter, so we popped up the road to Sobeys (Canada's answer to Sainsburys) and stocked up on supplies for the big cook. Renee's dad had also supplied us with some amazing pumpkin cider which he had brought all the way from New Hampshire - it was delicious, and as I put it, 'tasted like Christmas'. 

Sorry lobbies.

The lobster itself didn't really taste 'fishy', as I'd expected it to, it was slightly salty (although we're not sure if this is because we put too much salt in the boiling water), and tender. Lobster taste varies according to area, so if you were eating it in Maine, you would get a very 'sweet' tasting meat. We were a little worried as the lobsters had been frozen the day before, but they turned out pretty good, according to in house lobster expert of the evening, Renee. I think the cats have a taste for lobster too, as they were trying to climb all over the table whilst we were eating, and proceeded to try and lick the shell bowl after we had finished eating! Maybe, in the days before my host, Lyndsay, had taken them in, they had developed expensive tastes! Naturally, being this side of the pond, our lobster dinner was followed by a shared tub of Ben and Jerry's 'If I had 1000000 flavours' ice cream - the perfect end to a wonderful evening. 

A dinner fit for kings!

Now, I know I've always said I don't like the idea of eating lobster - mainly because with the amount of lobster dissections I've had to do for my PhD over the years - it has put me right off. It also has something to do with the idea of diseases - obviously, as a pathologist, diseases are 'my thing', and it surprises me what can be inside a seemingly healthy looking lobster. All of the diseases I have looked at so far do not affect humans, and affected lobsters can still be eaten - shell disease is more an aesthetic thing, most shell diseased lobsters are forced to be sold into the lower value canned meat industry, as nobody wants a scabby looking lobster on their plate! I have heard that shell diseased crab causes a 'metallic' taste, but I've not read it about lobsters. Other pathogens, such as nicothoe parasites, live on the gills.. which wouldn't be eaten anyway, and they are only interested in sucking lobster blood, so nothing to be scared of there! 

My work so far has actually been funded by a project called 'SUSFISH: Shellfish Productivity in the Irish Sea: working towards a sustainable future', and another grant from the Fisheries Challenge Fund - 'Importation of live lobsters into the U.K. - An assessment of disease transfer to European lobsters'. Both of these projects are concerned with fisheries, and sustainability, so I support lobster fishing - if it is done sustainably... I feel a whole new blog post coming on regarding this, but there is a time and a place!

Foxy.

All of the trees!

Okay, so before the epic lobster feast on Friday, I failed to mention that en route to 'school' (I love that they call it that here!), I managed to capture a picture of some of the elusive foxes! Unfortunately, it wasn't the rare black one with a white tail, as mentioned in blog post 28/09/13, but a couple of regular red foxes (Vulpes vulpes, for all the Caspians out there). I see them daily, walking to, and from school. They don't seem perturbed by humans, so I'm pretty sure that someone out there is feeding them, as they really do come quite close. However, after whipping out my camera they all scarpered pretty sharpish, so it makes me wonder whether they thought it was a gun? Do people shoot foxes out here? My camera was slung over my shoulder, so quite possibly... Either way, I managed to get a couple of snaps, not so great, but you can see how close they don't mind getting.
Friday was full of awesome-ness, as that afternoon, Renee had invited me out with some of her course-mates (1st year veterinarian students) to go apple picking at Wintermoor Orchard, in York  (about a 10 minute drive out of Charlottetown). I waited for Renee after class, and it was a little scary because AVC is a relatively small 'school', and I was clearly an outsider, so I did get some funny looks in the corridor by the lockers... however, there was nothing to worry about after Renee arrived and I had been introduced to everyone. Her friend Liz took us to the orchard to save us taking too many cars, and we managed to get there without getting lost! The orchard was huge! There were several different types of apple in season, and we were given a map which we quickly forgot whilst exploring. The woman had told us we were allowed to sample and eat the apples as we went, which was a bad idea, as we all ended up eating our way through the orchard (never give students a free lunch.. we will take advantage!). I chose a few different types, and the boys came in handy for the shiny big apples which were higher up.

Plaidurday!

Now, just by chance, on Friday, I happened to be wearing a 'plaid' (checkered) shirt, and I noticed that a few of the girls were too wearing them. It turned out that Friday was actually 'Plaidurday' - a worldwide celebration of plaid which occurs annually on the first Friday of October. Who'd have known?! Naturally, we had to have a plaidurday photo.

Giant pumpkin.

At the orchard, they also have a cider press, and we were invited to a cider pressing event on Sunday, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to make it out there. I already have so many other plans, this weekend has been exciting! They also sold pumpkins, and I know halloween is a HUGE deal over here, so I just assumed that they were all out for the upcoming event. Since the day I arrived in Charlottetown I have seen houses decorated for halloween, and even specialist halloween shops dotted around the place - it really is crazy, like Christmas! Anyway, at the orchard they had the biggest pumpkin I have ever seen, and Renees friend Wilson was pretty tall, but as you can see, it still looked pretty impressive! Giant pumpkins?! I hear you ask... Yes, my blog really is that exciting. You're welcome.

Back to school

So, after my epic weekend of exploration, I remembered that I was actually here for a reason (doh), and that I had better get some reading done in readiness for 'school', as they call it over here, on Monday. I was a little nervous - having swapped numerous emails I was about to meet my collaborators.

I needn't have worried. Professor Greenwood (Spencer), is the nicest guy on the planet! He met me in the foyer of the Atlantic Veterinary College (part of the University of Prince Edward Island, or UPEI for short), I was bound to get lost if I tried to find his office myself. After a brief tour of the AVC, and the biomedical sciences department, where he is based, I finally got to see the The Lobster Science Centre.. it is made up of 2 labs, and I was given an office space so I could store my stuff. 

We Skyped Andrew (my supervisor), to set some aims for my time here, and agreed that I would be shadowing his lab technician Adam Acorn for the most part, starting with some RNA extractions, and setting up a qPCR (basically, ways of amplifying DNA so that you can use it to detect pathogens or certain genes, which may be expressed in conjunction with a disease). Their labs are amazing, they are so high tech and I'm in awe, just staring at everything, they have several different grants and projects going on at once, from lobster pathogens such as Gaffkaemia, Bumper Car Disease and White Spot Syndrome Virus, to crab diseases such as Bitter Crab Disease (caused by Hematodinium spp.). To my non-crustacea loving friends, this will all be total jibberish, so apologies! They also work on none-crustacea diseases, such as Crypto, which causes stomach bugs.. details of which can be found here. 

In the labs they have 'robots', which I've never seen before - basically machines that do everything, from pipetting out a mastermix for a qPCR, to adding in the samples. This is mind blowing (and expensive!), great for speeding up extractions, PCR and other analysis of high volume samples, and at the same time, eliminating human error. This is excellent for the hundreds of samples they receive to test for other institutions, however, as a student, despite my admiration, I can't help but feel that you lose the 'science' of some things, ie. the breakdown of reactions, and exactly what goes into a PCR mix to make it work. I feel that when you are learning as a student, manually might be better, to give a better understanding later on.

Spencer had invited me to a genetics seminar on Wednesday, which he assured me would include a free lunch and a chance to meet lots of cool people (food genetics... err... genetics in general... my brain is hurting just thinking about it)... however plans changed (should I be relieved?), and instead I attended a shorter seminar on aquaculture, presented by an AVC alumni now based in New Zealand.

On Wednesday I got to meet one of Spencer's post-docs, Dr. Fraser Clarke, who is only in a few days a week (he lives in Nova Scotia, which is over an hour away), so time with him is valuable. He completed his PhD with Spencer looking at gaffkaemia, so is the perfect guy for me to talk to, and a fountain of knowledge about lobster immune systems. After sitting down with him for just half an hour I was ready to start designing primers (??!). He was really friendly and helpful and didn't mind that I didn't have a clue what he was talking about half the time. We went through some ideas I had, he showed me some pathogens down the microscope and talked me through a few histology slides, which contained gaffkaemia and bumper car - both of which I have never seen down the microscope, so that was cool!

By this afternoon (Friday), I had come up with a proposal for two separate projects (and maybe even a third one!), which I can start here and complete once I am home in Swansea, using equipment we already have in the lab. I am really excited about everything I have learnt this week, it's so nice to get someone else's perspective, and as Fraser said, we are both at early stages in our career and this is how collaborations start!

In other news, I've been to my new yoga school a few times now, and am booked in most days until next week.. I love it! The heat wasn't unbearable at all, it was about 40 degrees celsius, but once you're 'in the zone', you don't notice it (except when the sweat starts dripping in your eyes... blerughghh, I am gross, I know). I think it helps you relax as I was getting into positions I didn't even know were possible and it didn't feel like a regimented workout, you just did what you could and concentrated on your breathing. After class, my teacher today, Robin, and I got talking, and it turns out that her sister did her degree at the lobster science centre and now works with the local lobster fishery, and is married to a lobster fisherman. She gave me her email so I could chat to her.. I think the UK, Wales especially, could learn a lot from fisheries over here!

For now, there are lots of new things to learn and lots of reading to do. Having never practised techniques such as RNA extractions (I only have experience with DNA), qPCR, or primer design, it is all very exciting and new, and I hope that I can replicate my new found skills once I'm back in the UK.

Apologies for lack of pictures in this post - I hope to take some of the lab next week, when I am actually doing some 'hands on' work... and I hope too to get some pictures of the wildlife here - every morning walking to University, I see wild foxes, they are beautiful and shy, so usually run away, but this evening I had the fright of my life when I saw a black fox with a white tail!? He stared at me for a while before strutting past, stunned me a little...! It has been pouring with rain all week, so I felt right at home, but the weather for the weekend is looking up - perfect for some more exploring.