Photo: Dr. Tim Miller-Morgan and Dr. Cassandra Bliss examine the eye of a rockfish.
At any given moment, Oregon State University labs and aquariums are home to tens of thousands of fish, providing clues to researchers on everything from toxicology to climate to infectious disease.
As associate attending veterinarian for aquatics, Dr. Tim Miller-Morgan and his team work to ensure best caretaking practices and healthy living conditions for everything with gills.
“The overall goal is to provide more oversight and support for researchers that are working with aquatic animals on campus, particularly fish,” Miller-Morgan said. “When a PI has issues with, say, health problems in a lab, I’m there to help diagnose that problem, help come up with a management strategy or determine if they need to screen their animals for certain diseases before use.”
His position, created in the spring of 2024, is housed within the Division of Research and Innovation and reports to OSU’s attending veterinarian, Dr. Jennifer Sargent.
Miller-Morgan and his team of three full-time professional aquarists are available to researchers across OSU, from undergraduate students to full professors, who may need assistance with tasks like setting up water filtration systems or figuring out what to do about parasites.
With nearly 40 years of experience in animal husbandry, focused on aquatic animals, Miller-Morgan understands the importance of preventive care and system management. If he and his team members don’t immediately know the answer to a question, they are usually able to find someone who does through their network of research institutions and industry contacts, including at the Oregon Coast Aquarium and the Oregon Zoo, he said.
The importance of animal husbandry for OSU’s aquatic species is twofold, Miller-Morgan said. First, if the fish used in research aren’t healthy to start with, there is a potential for confounding variables skewing the results of that research. And secondly, as a veterinarian, he has an obligation to provide the best possible care for research animals at OSU.
With fish living in closed, recirculating systems, like the zebrafish Robyn Tanguay studies in the College of Agricultural Science, management centers on preventing diseases or parasites from ever entering the system.
Out at the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, where Miller-Morgan is based, researchers are more likely to have trouble with bacterial and parasitic infections because they’re bringing in water directly from Newport Bay with minimal treatment, so management becomes more reactive with treatments like regular deworming for fish that enter the system with parasites.
Miller-Morgan isn’t just focused on bony fish; he also takes care of invertebrates like octopuses, anemones, crabs and oysters. With the octopuses, the team works to provide robust enrichment so the animal doesn’t get bored and stressed. He and a former student developed an octopus welfare matrix to conduct weekly health assessments, and that matrix is now used in about 30 aquariums around the country.
Miller-Morgan’s work extends far beyond the university: He co-founded the aquarium science program at Oregon Coast Community College, as well as two professional organizations for veterinarians that work with aquatic medicine: the American Association of Fish Veterinarians and the World Aquatic Veterinary Medical Association. Through these associations, he’s helped develop a certified aquatic veterinarian program and facilitated the development of a board specialty for veterinarians to become recognized specialists in fish medicine.
“That’s the neat thing about aquatic medicine; we’re still learning,” he said. “We know less about aquatic vertebrates than we do about terrestrial vertebrates. It’s something different every day.”
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