The Center for Marine Sciences and Technology (CMAST) is where to go if you want to examine a 920-pound marlin in the morning and a 4-gram frog at night.

While the NC State campus in Raleigh slows over the summer, CMAST in Morehead City bustles with students and faculty practicing veterinary medicine and conducting research: running health assessments on mahi mahi, amputating flippers to help injured sea turtles and gathering data on blackfin sharks. Above all, they are having experiences that will help them determine their futures.

“I really find that what changes people’s lives — because it happened to me many years ago — is getting out of the classroom, getting out of the lab, getting into the field, getting a little bit uncomfortable,” says Professor Gregory Lewbart, who specializes in aquatic, wildlife and zoological medicine. He has led dozens of research trips, some as far away as the Galápagos Islands and Madagascar. This summer he is at CMAST with four students who are helping him with marine animal research.

“At CMAST, we go out in boats, and it can be rough, and people get seasick, but they survive it, you know? It builds confidence that’s hard to build any other way than experiencing it.”

On the Dock at Big Rock

At the Big Rock Blue Marlin Tournament, when the horn sounds to indicate a fishing boat is returning to shore and crowds congregate to glimpse the catch, College of Veterinary Medicine students are ready on the dock with gloves, syringes, needles and sample vials.

“We set up a science table. And then when a fish comes in, we go and get samples,” Lewbart says. “I help the students get blood samples and eyeball samples. It’s like forensics: We’re looking at dead fish blood and eye fluid to see what that can tell us about when the fish was alive.”

Ocular fluid provides information similar to blood but doesn’t degrade as quickly, giving researchers extra time for analysis. Sydney MacDonald, a third-year veterinary college student whose focus is on mahi mahi, says researchers are looking at biomarkers such as electrolyte and glucose levels that they can compare to blood samples taken from live fish. If the postmortem samples provide the same information, researchers can use fish that have already been killed to monitor overall population health instead of catching, and distressing, live fish.

After researchers take samples, tuna, wahoo and other commonly eaten fish are returned to the people who caught them. The marlin go to CMAST for further analysis.

This year saw the largest marlin caught in the tournament’s 68 years: a 919.9-pound female that weighed more than Lewbart and the students helping him combined. Professor Craig Harms, director of CMAST’s marine health program, and Professor Jeffrey Buckel’s lab performed the necropsy. Inside were the remains of two sailfish the marlin had eaten and a bill — the long, pointy nose-like protrusion found on marlin, sailfish and similar fish — stuck in its gills. Lewbart estimates it had been there a couple of months.

“It will be interesting to look at the values between that marlin with the bill stuck in it and other marlin,” Lewbart says.

Researchers at CMAST study animals other than fish. One of Lewbart’s students this year is involved in a long-term project to help North Carolina’s endangered gopher frog. The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission estimated in 2020 that there could be as few as 200 frogs in the state; threats to them include disease, prolonged droughts and loss of habitat to development. The commission began a headstarting initiative 15 years ago to help the population recover, partnering with institutions including the North Carolina Zoo, the aquarium at Fort Fisher and CMAST.

These institutions receive gopher frog eggs, raise the frogs and then release them safely into the wild.

“We sample the water where they came from; we sample the water where they’re going. And then we take a little blood sample from some of them, measure their weight and then let them go,” Lewbart says. He and his students are working closely with Jeff Hall, a biologist with the state Wildlife Resources Commission, and NC State instructor Carol Seals Price, who is also the conservation research coordinator for the North Carolina Aquariums.

A creature that weighs just a few grams can have a giant effect on the ecosystem.

“I think it’s hard because people don’t see the bigger picture; it is just a frog,” MacDonald says. “But that frog eats something smaller. And if that frog’s not there to eat that smaller thing, then that smaller thing may overpopulate, and then that’s going to hurt other populations that are feeding something that might be important to you. I think it’s really important to remind people that even the smallest species are part of a greater food chain that contributes to feeding us.”

‘Hey, We Have a Fish Crisis’

There’s no such thing as a typical day at CMAST.

“One time I went to the lab, and I was looking at blood smear slides, and Dr. Harms was like, ‘Hey, we have a fish crisis,’” MacDonald recalls. “And I was like, ‘A fish crisis?’”

The crisis took place at a nearby aquaculture facility. Staff discovered that seven of eight fish in a tank had died the night before. Harms and MacDonald tested the water; collected the fish so they could perform necropsies, skin scrapes and gill biopsies; and are still waiting to learn the results.

Earlier this month, MacDonald was interrupted once more while looking at blood smear slides. A third-year resident needed help treating injured turtles and asked MacDonald if she would like to shadow her.

“And so I got to run anesthesia on a sea turtle for a flipper amputation, which was really fun,” MacDonald says.

Then, a lab in CMAST that focuses on microplastics in sea turtles asked for help clearing out a necropsied animal’s gastrointestinal tract. MacDonald gladly made time.

“And then I went back to reading my blood smear slides till the end of the day — which is why I actually went to the lab that day,” she says.

Sea turtles have provided MacDonald with many learning opportunities at CMAST. She performed her first turtle necropsy last year on one whose head and spinal cord were injured by a boat propellor. This year she has been on the teaching side.

“I did three sea turtle necropsies two or three weeks ago, and I was teaching undergraduates while I was doing those necropsies,” she says.

The students at CMAST aren’t solely from the vet school; other NC State graduate students, doctoral students and students from other universities are welcome. MacDonald is especially glad to see undergraduates get a jump-start on research. They often join her and Lewbart when they take his boat out to study marine life.

“I think I have probably trained, taught and spoken to, on the low side, probably 20 undergraduate students this summer,” MacDonald says. “These students are committed. They want these experiences, they want these opportunities, and they’re taking every single one that is thrown their way.”

Saving Animals, Helping Communities

The mix of students at CMAST is nothing compared to the mix of people who join the research program in the Galápagos Islands. Trips there include NC State students and alumni, professionals from around the world, and two Ecuadorian veterinary students and one of their professors. This month’s trip is being led by one of Lewbart’s former students.

The research program, called Islavet, focuses on the health and conservation of local animals including sharks, lizards and the iconic giant tortoises. It’s open to all third-year vet students and is a cultural experience as much as a research one.

“I love seeing the joy in these students when they get to see or handle an animal that they’ve only dreamed about or seen on TV, that kind of thing — like giant tortoises, marine iguanas, whatever it is,” Lewbart says. “Also, just kind of broadening their horizons, getting them out of their comfort zones, getting them to experience different cultures. Like going to places like the Galápagos, where it’s hot, and it’s rainy, and you get sunburned, and there are bugs, and you don’t speak the language. And at the end of it — the end of the day or the end of the week — you realize, ‘Wow, that was an amazing experience.’”

“I think it’s really important to remind people that even the smallest species are part of a greater food chain that contributes to feeding us.”

MacDonald says research was a daunting, even scary prospect when she was an undergraduate student at her college in Texas. That changed when she arrived at NC State. Now she has conducted research in both the Galápagos Islands and Madagascar, and she is looking forward to studying snakes this winter in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines in the Caribbean.

“I got introduced to so much research that I was like, ‘OK, this is really cool,’” she says. “And then I started to see how important it is for the future of animals and humans and ecosystems, and I was like, ‘I have to do this.’”

One reason she is drawn to fish is because she is thinking of the future. MacDonald grew up in the Outer Banks and knows firsthand there’s a link between healthy fish and thriving communities.

“Any coastal community anywhere in the world, the well-being of fish and the ecosystems that they live in are huge because if we don’t keep those populations healthy, then commercial fishing’s going to go away,” she says. “And that’s a huge economic thing for all these communities. And so I really love that aspect, that I will be able to help keep those fish populations thriving for years and years to come so that these coastal communities don’t have to start pivoting and falling.”

CMAST and other research programs give NC State vet students an edge when they graduate and enter the workforce. Zoos and aquariums value vets who can help with conservation efforts on the side.

“Part of their mission is giving back to the wild,” Lewbart says. “They go to Madagascar and help tortoises, or they go to the Caribbean to help snakes. And a lot of those programs need veterinarians with experience who can take blood from a 4-gram frog safely.”