Tuesday 14th of May, the second day of the Training School took place. It started with the welcome of the ICMAN-CSIC Manager, Dra. Carmen Sarasquete, and the rest of the Organising Committee: Dr. Elsa Cabrita (ICMAN-CSIC), Dr. Paz Herráez (Universidad de León), Dr. Vanesa Robles (Universidad de León) and Juan F. Asturiano (UPV).

Right after, Dr. Elsa Cabrita and Dr. Francisco Prat (in the pictures) showed the ICMAN-CSIC facilities to the group, including the different tank rooms, those destined to auxiliary culture and to ecotoxicology experiments, and rules for their use during the week of the course were taught to students.



To end the morning session, Prof. Barry Fuller (UCL Medical School & Royal Free Hospital, London) gave a lecture entitled “Low temperatures and the Lazarus factor; recovering life from the extremes in applied cryobiology”, in which he made a fabulous review of pioneer studies of cryopreservation, its evolution during the last decades and the current trends in this research area.

In the afternoon, the first practical session, entitled “Fish sperm cryopreservation and evaluation of quality”, was given by Dr. Sonia Martínez-Páramo (Universidad del Algarve, Portugal) and Dr. David S. Peñaranda (UPV, Spain).

The first part of the session consisted of the extraction of eel sperm by students. Right after, they used a CASA system to evaluate the sperm motility and an ASMA software to determine sperm morphometric parameters. Finally, they used different technologies for freezing sperm samples, such as the use of a biofreezer shown in the following pictures.