MARVET Mexico 2022

We are excited to share below Ms. Christine Ruffin’s international experience, funded by Dr. Thomas Mack. 

Describe your experience: 

This past summer, I participated in a two-week externship in Playa del Carmen, Mexico to learn more about marine animal medicine and conservation. During the course, I gained hands on experience working with species including dolphins, sea turtles, manatees, sea lions, and stingrays. The externship included a variety of lectures from a wildlife veterinary epidemiologist, a clinical veterinarian at Disney World, a wildlife clinical pathologist, and many clinical veterinarians at ecological parks within the Riviera Maya. Highlights of this trip includes practicing phlebotomy on sea turtles, performing a sea turtle necropsy, and interpreting dolphin ultrasonography.

What did this experience allow you to gain outside of the College of Veterinary Medicine curriculum?

This experience allowed me to gain clinical experience with marine animals and develop an in-depth knowledge of the anatomy and physiology of these animals. This experience would have been impossible to achieve at Ohio State as the diversity of species I worked with were unique to the Riviera Maya. The coursework at Ohio State gave me the knowledge to extrapolate concepts learned about domestic species to aquatic animals in a clinical setting. Lecture topics ranged from strandings, rescue & rehabilitation, clinical pathology, anatomy & physiology, reproduction, and common infectious diseases of marine animals.