Phil Goodman, Florida Keys Mosquito Control District 2 Commissioner and Board Chair, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s been going on with the mosquitoes.
Mosquito activity has increased in the Keys.
Goodman said, “We’re experiencing the first of the spring season for 2025 mosquitoes and like always, during the winter months, you have all of these mosquitos that are here. They’re laying eggs, but it’s not much rain. So there’s just billions of eggs that are laying dormant on the shorelines. Last week we had high tide. We had rain, first rain. So all of those mosquitoes really start releasing, and we’ve had quite a challenge here, and particularly in the Lower Keys, with the trying to treat for the mosquitoes, and also when the winds are coming in, which really delays. We had about 11 missions this past week that were delayed because of winds, but they came down. We got them all in now, but we still need some more treatments in the Lower Keys. We did treat last night, and it looks like the next couple of days we’re going to have the winds laying down a little bit. We’ll be able to get back out and hopefully get everything under control. The Middle and the Upper Keys are a lot better right now because they didn’t have as much rain as we had here in the Lower Keys. So we were able to get ahead of that. But the Lower Keys have been really a little bit of a challenge because of the high tides and the wind and the rain. So we also trying a new thing too. We were able to get out early in the morning last week on Friday, and we have some of our new equipment. We have electric foggers, rather than gasoline foggers, so they don’t make any noise. So we were able to get out in the mornings really early last week to do that. So this gives us another dimension for controlling mosquitoes that we’ll be using more and more, but right now, I think over the next couple of days, we should be able to really get ahead of the mosquito situation, particularly in the Lower Keys.”
How long do those mosquito eggs lay dormant?
Goodman said, “Mosquito eggs can lay there for six months and when the next rain or when the next high tide comes, and they are able to get water, they hatch. So in the winter time, we have less number of mosquitoes, but they’re laying eggs all year long, and we have less rain, so there’s less mosquitos, but when you have the first rains in the spring is when you really get hit. This happens about every year, so it takes us a little bit of time to get caught up, particularly if the winds are a factor, which they certainly were this year. We’re pretty much equipped to handle those things. The wind is the real problem, though, one thing that we cannot overcome. When it’s windy, we can’t get out and spray.”
Mosquito borne diseases are a concern in Miami, but the Keys haven’t had any outbreaks.
Goodman said, “Malaria and Dengue fever are the two main diseases that Florida is concerned with, the Department of Health here. Mainly here in the Keys, we’re concerned with Dengue fever, not so much malaria, because the mosquito that carries the malaria is a mosquito that is not in huge numbers here in the Keys, and we’re easily controlling it by the pesticides we use. This is quite different than Dengue fever because the pesticides that we use there, that mosquito, the Aedes aegypti, is becoming resistant to it, so it makes it very difficult for us to control it like we would like. So far, we’ve been able to do a good job. We’ve kept these diseases out of the keys, but Miami, being a real center for travel coming in from Central America, South America, where a lot of these diseases are really endemic, they are really getting hit and it’s already started this year. They’ve had one local case in Miami, but many travel related cases of both Dengue fever and malaria. Malaria is growing in the state as well. So it’s a sign of international travel, people moving around more and more is why Florida is back, really in the crosshairs for some of these mosquito borne diseases.”
Wolbachia technology can help reduce the chances of Dengue fever in the Keys.
Goodman said, “The mosquito that carries Dengue fever is very difficult for us to control with pesticides, because it’s becoming resistant. There are no vaccines that are really effective against any a fever, no medical treatment. So the only way to control the virus is to control the mosquito, and we have problems because the chemistry that we can use is not as effective. So we have to look for other means. A number of years ago, this sterile insect technology was developed, and there’s three methods of doing this, and Wolbachia is one of them, and the Oxitec mosquito is the other. The Oxitec is still under evaluation by the EPA and probably will not be available for commercialization until later this year, but Wolbachia was approved by the EPA last year, and it’s a proven, safe and effective way to control the Aedes aegypti mosquito, but it’s pretty complicated. Wolbachia is a bacteria that’s naturally occurring in many of mosquitoes that do not carry disease and what science has been able to do is implant this bacteria into the Aedes aegypti male and when this is released, it mates with the wild females, and there are no viable offsprings, so you continue to release these Wolbachia treated male mosquitoes, and the population in the area that you’re releasing them in begins to drop after a very short period of time, within three or four months, you’ve really significantly reduced the Aedes aegypti population in there. That’s what we want. We’ve got three sites in the Keys, two in Key Largo and one in Marathon that we’ve chosen for this pilot project. These were three really hot spots for Aedes aegypti mosquito and we’ll be starting releases in in May, and it’ll go through October. We plan to release about, total about 1 million of these mosquitoes in those three areas. We also have three control areas that we’ll be using that are very similar to the test areas. So then that’s how we will judge the effectiveness, looking at what’s going on in the control areas where we’ll do everything except release the Wolbachia mosquitoes compared to the test areas, and we’ll be able to get a good comparison by the end of the year to see how well it works for us and how many mosquitoes, there’s a ratio of how many you release versus how many wild mosquitoes males are in the in the area, to see if you can bring this down in a short period of time. So that’s the things that we’ll be looking at to see how effective it is. We plan to continue to use this if we get good results, and then also incorporate the Oxitec program next year, because there’s really room for both of these in the Florida Keys. So a lot of work ahead of us, and the people in these areas really won’t even realize that there’s any new tests in there, because they really won’t see anything. These mosquitoes that we release, as soon as you release them, the males, they go to the vegetation and do their job trying to find female mosquitoes with which to mate and they only live for just a couple of days. So we’ll be releasing these about twice a week in those test areas.”
The Florida Keys Mosquito Control District board will meet today at 1 p.m. in Marathon.
Goodman said, “We have an audit meeting and we’ll have our auditor present. He will give the audit report for last year’s financial review, and I’ve read all of the documents, and we had a really good year there, as far as the audit, no problems, but we’ll be going over that and approving that today as well. Also Jim Scholl will be by, the mayor for the county. He’ll be by and kind of give us an update on the county, and we’ll give him an update on mosquito control, and also give him a tour of our facilities in Marathon. We work closely with the county commission to keep them up to date on what we’re doing there, and we also have a strategic planning workshop today, which we had a strategic planning meeting of all the employees a few weeks ago. Today we’ll be going over the results of that, what it looks like that’s going to be in our strategic plan for the next several years, a lot of good things came out of that. Then we’ll have our regular meeting. One of the main things in our regular meeting today, we will be approving the purchase of our fourth new helicopter. This will be the last one that we need you. We had a 10 year plan that we started about nine years ago to replace our aging fleet of aircraft, and we’ve replaced all of them but one, and we have the money now that we’ve accrued over the past years saving up for this, and so we’ll be purchasing that. It’ll be delivered sometime early next year, so by mosquito season, starting next year, we will have a full fleet out there. This new fleet has really helped us. These are faster. They carry more payload. They were able to cover a lot of ground. So this has really allowed us to, when it rains, all up and down the Keys, we can get ahead of the mosquitoes very quickly, much, much more than we used to. So it’s really been a good addition to mosquito control operations.”
This week is Florida Mosquito Control Awareness Week.
Goodman said, “We have a lot of things that we’ll be doing, mostly on social media. So look at social media. There’ll be a lot of posting of tips, things that you can do to kind of protect your property and get prepared for the mosquito season on your property. Because all of us, if we’re not careful, we contribute to the breeding of mosquitoes on our own properties. There’s certain things that all of us can do to really minimize this, to help control, particularly Dengue fever, because the mosquitoes that we’re breeding on our properties are the Aedes aegypti, and mosquitoes mainly that that carried Dengue fever. So be looking on social media and others for tips to help you this year.”