Visit to DAL AC

Our R&D Coordinator Sarah recently spent an afternoon at Dalhousie University Agricultural Campus in Truro learning from AANS Science Adviser and Senior Instructor Scott Jeffrey. Sarah was also joined by AANS members Sam Pascoe of Bill and Stanley Oyster Company and Scott Samson of Louisbourg Seafoods. The three participated in a lab for a senior aquaculture class to learn how to sex and strip spawn oysters. Strip spawning is lethal to the oysters, but it does allow for controlled fertilization which is important for many research scale activities.

Thanks to Scott Jeffrey and his students for inviting AANS members for continued education!

Scott Jeffrey teaching the class how to visually rate oyster quality
Sarah, Sam and Scott shucking the oysters

With a microscope, they were able to sex the oysters and choose several with the most abundant and uniformly shaped eggs and sperm for fertilization. Within the lab period they were able to observe cell division from a newly fertilized egg!

Some quality eggs viewed at 100X magnification
Combining the egg and sperm samples on a microscope slide
The arrow is pointing to cell division from a successful fertilization event (100X magnification)

After the lab Scott showed the AANS members the aquaculture facilities at Dal AC. The day ended by seeing some spat they were culturing. A bit bigger than the oysters that were generated in lab!

Some oyster spat at Dal AC

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