There are a number of women who are playing a key role in the growth of the aquaculture industry in the Coast of Bays. One of these interesting women is Jackie Rose, a young woman from St. Alban’s who is today the manager of three fish health laboratories in the province.
Jackie Rose grew up in St. Alban’s and headed off to the Nova Scotia Agricultural College in Truro following her graduation from Holy Cross High School.
While back home from the college on a summer break she landed a job with Dr. Leighanne Hawkins who was a veterinarian working with the provincial Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture (DFA) in the St. Alban’s area at that time.
Rose said, “It was while working with Dr. Hawkins that I simply fell in love with aquaculture. We’d be out on the water collecting samples and doing some work back at the lab here. I knew then that I wanted to pursue aquaculture as a career.”
Rose graduated from the Truro College in 2001 with a degree in agriculture that contained a major in aquaculture. She then volunteered to work at the University of Louisiana in their estuary program for a year.
However, she felt Newfoundland calling her back and she was soon in St. Alban’s again where she has been working with the provincial DFA Department since 2003.
“I started working with DFA in a lab/field position under Dr. Daryl Whelan. I attended the site visits and would come back to the old lab to process the fish myself and send samples off to the veterinary college in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.”
All that hard work has certainly paid off for Rose as she is now the lab manager for the three DFA laboratories in the province - the ones in St. John’s and Grand Falls-Windsor and the brand new Centre for Aquaculture Health and Development in St. Alban’s.
“My job here has evolved over the years to this new position of being the senior lab technologist here at the new health centre in St. Alban’s. My role has changed too, of course, in that I’m now more involved with managing as well as the hands on laboratory duties.
Rose said that she really likes her new position with DFA.
“I’m not the type of person that likes to do repetitive work every day. While the actual technologies may be routine, as a whole, this job is different every day.
“I could be helping with a post mortem or autopsy on a fish, or I could be setting up equipment in our new facility. Just recently, for example, we installed some very technologically advanced equipment valued at a million dollars at this facility. I could be travelling to Grand Falls-Windsor to train a new technician or to a meeting in St. John’s or abroad for various laboratory training.
“To me, this position was a long time coming but it’s very exciting. I love working with Dr. Whelan and all the staff here at this new state-of-the-art centre.”
Rose said that she is looking forward to the extra work and new experiences that the new centre will offer her and the staff.
“One of the main advantages of this new health centre is that we now have the capability to do almost all of our testing in-house. This will mean more interesting work for us, and we’re all eagerly looking forward to that.”
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