A fish-surgery class at the University of Melbourne
Credit: Glenn Hunt
Dr Helen Roberts was about to make the first incision in what should have been a standard surgery - a quick in-and-out procedure - when she froze. "Bonnie," she said, turning to her anaesthetist, Bonita Wulf. "Is she breathing? I don't see her breathing." Roberts's eyes darted around the room. "Grab the Doppler," she told her other assistant. "I want to hear her heart. Bonnie, how's she doing?"
Bonnie pushed up her purple glasses, leaned over the surgery table and lowered her face centimetres from the patient to watch for any signs of breath: nothing. "She's too deep," Roberts said, "go ahead and give her 30cc of fresh water." Bonnie picked up an old plastic jug filled with pond water and poured two glugs into the anaesthesia machine. Seconds later, a whisper of a heart rate came through the Doppler. Bonnie wasn't happy: "We have gill movement - but not much." Then the Doppler went silent and she reached for the jug. "Wait," Roberts said. "We have fin movement ... damn, she's waking up - 30cc of anaesthetic." Roberts sighed. "She was holding her breath," she said, shaking her head. "Fish are a lot smarter than people give them credit for."
That's right - fish. Helen Roberts and Bonita Wulf were doing surgery on a goldfish. Not the fancy kind that people buy for thousands of dollars and keep in decorative ponds (though they do surgery on those too), but on a county-fair goldfish named the Golden One, which Roberts adopted when its previous owners brought it into her clinic outside Buffalo, New York, saying they didn't have time to take care of it. Which is to say, it's an ordinary fish that could belong to anybody. Just like Lucky, the half-kilo koi with a one-kilogram tumour; Sunshine, who was impaled on a branch during a bit of rough sex; Betta, with a fluid-filled abdomen; and countless goldfish with so-called buoyancy disorders, like the perpetually upside-down Belly Bob, or Raven, who was stuck floating nose down and tail to the sky. All those fish went under the knife.
Ten years ago, the chances of finding a 'fish vet' were slim. But true to its history, veterinary medicine is steadily evolving to meet the demands of pet owners. In the early 20th century, vets treated livestock mostly, not cats and dogs - you usually shot those. But by the mid-1950s, the world was in love with Rin Tin Tin and Lassie, and people started thinking, "I shouldn't have to shoot my dog". By the 1970s, dogs and cats could get human-quality medical care - but treating birds? That was insane. Instead, bird advice came from pet stores (and birds died of a 'draft', a diagnosis akin to 'the vapours'). Yet by the 1980s, avian medicine had its own academic programs in the United States, as well as professional society, a monthly magazine and a large clientele. Today, mainstream veterinary science has kept pace with the obsessions of its owners, and many industrialised countries - including Australia (see box) - have surgery for parakeets, organ transplantation for dogs and cats, even chemotherapy for guinea pigs. But people who want to take fish to the vet? Obviously crazy, right? Well, maybe not.
"I have no doubt fish medicine will become mainstream much like bird medicine did in the 80s," said Dr David Scarfe, assistant director of scientific activities at the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) in Illinois. "It's actually happening far more rapidly than I'd imagined." According to the AVMA, almost 2,000 vets in the U.S. alone practise fish medicine. That number is steadily growing, and the market seems solid: 13.9 million households have fish and spend several billions of dollars annually on fish supplies - tanks, water conditioners, food - not including veterinary care or the fish themselves, which can cost as much as US$100,000, occasionally more.
Fish diagnostics range from a basic exam, blood work and X-rays to the advanced, including ultrasounds and computed-tomography (CT) scans. Veterinarians tube feed fish. They give fish enemas, fix broken bones with plates and screws, remove impacted eggs, treat scoliosis and even do fish plastic surgery - anything from glass-eye implantation to 'surgical pattern improvement' with scale transplantation, scale tattooing or unsightly-scale removal.
But some of the most common and vexing fish ailments are buoyancy disorders. They involve the swim bladder, an organ in the digestive tract prone to infections, obstructions and defects that destroy a fish's ability to regulate air, leaving it 'improperly buoyant', to the point of floating or sinking in odd positions - usually upside down. Surgically inserting a tiny stone in the fish's abdomen to weigh it down is the best option, but since that costs anywhere from US$150 to US$1,500, depending on where and how it's done, many vets first recommend 'green-pea treatment': "Feeding affected goldfish a single green pea (canned or cooked and lightly crushed) once daily might cure the problem," Dr Greg Lewbart wrote in a paper titled "Green Peas for Buoyancy Disorders" in Exotic DVM Veterinary Magazine. Lewbart is a professor of aquatic medicine at the College of Veterinary Medicine at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, but even he isn't sure how pea treatment works.
