Phil Goodman, board chair for District Two, Florida Keys Mosquito Control District, joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on with mosquitoes.
How are the numbers of mosquitoes?
Goodman said, “The counts are really good everywhere in the Keys, but last week, we had some rain, particularly in the Upper Keys. We also had a lot of west winds, so there’s a lot of activity from the Everglades coming in. So, we had a lot of mosquitoes coming into the Upper Keys. We have really been active and controlling. We’ve had our trucks out every day, and as of yesterday the mosquito count numbers are really down. We had a little bit of rain last night, I know at my home on Cudjoe, and so we’ll continue to be out, but the numbers in the Lower and the Middle Keys have been really good lately, so we’ve been keeping those under control, but it’s day to day with the weather here in the Florida Keys, so the season has started, and we’re very active.”
Mosquito-borne diseases are the real worry.
Goodman said, “That’s our main job is to keep this community safe from mosquito-borne diseases, and we’ve really been able to do a good job there. There are no mosquito-borne diseases at this time in the Florida Keys, and for Florida, for the last several weeks, the numbers have really been down as well. In fact, last week there were no recorded cases in Florida at all, of either travel-related or a local transmission, which is unusual. There’s been this wave, it’s been slowly dropping for the last several weeks, but we expect it to pick up because dengue fever and chikungunya, those are the two main diseases that we’re concerned with here in South Florida, brought in by the Aedes aegypti mosquito. Those numbers for the Aedes aegypti have also been relatively low. We see them creeping up a little bit when we go for several days when the wind doesn’t allow us to treat, but we are getting ready to start our regular aerial treatments, probably after the next rain in the Lower Keys, but right now those numbers are low, there are no diseases here, but we work every day to make that happen. As travel comes in from Central and South America, mainly into Miami, we get introduction of people who are infected, who infect the local mosquito population here, so this is something that we’re going to be facing for a long time to keep this out, so we’re working hard to keep that under control.”
The Wolbachia project is a way to control mosquitoes.
Goodman explained, “Wolbachia is using a bacteria that’s imparted into the male mosquito Aedes aegypti to make it sterile. When it mates with a wild female there are no viable offspring and we ran a number of trials last year. It was really a pilot project. This year’s an extension of the pilot project mainly in the Middle Keys. We’ve got three test sites 20 acres each, and three control sites, 20 acres each. We’ll be releasing a little bit less than 2 million mosquitoes there this year. We’ve already started early in April, and it’s a little bit early to really judge right now how effective it is, but by June, July, we should have enough data to really start seeing how effective this is in controlling those Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in those control test sites, so right now we’re optimistic that this will help. We plan to use technologies like this in hot spots to control the Aedes aegypti, and there are a number of hot spots in the Florida Keys, but right now we’re releasing twice a week, we’ll be releasing today, release Tuesdays and Fridays, and so we’re continuing. This is highly controlled by our people, so we’re getting a lot of good data because in the long term, the main chemicals we use for Aedes aegypti, the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes become resistant, and once it becomes really resistant, the effectiveness of our chemicals fall quickly. So we have to be prepared in the case of future mosquito-borne disease outbreaks that we’ll have tools that can control this. So this is something that’s going on all over Florida, everybody in the Florida Mosquito Control Association and the American Mosquito Control Association are working on these type of new technologies, so that we’ll be ready when we get enough information to know how effective these are.”
The Florida Keys Mosquito Control District board meets today.
Goodman said, “Today we will meet in our Marathon headquarters at 1o’clock and then we have four meetings today, and one of them will be a strategic planning workshop, and this is what we do every year this time, where the staff will unveil to the board what they plan for the new year, as far as new technologies in the strategic planning for mosquito control. This really guides us and guides all of our preparation. We do this in advance of the starting the budget process, which will begin next month, because we need to know what we’re going to be doing and how much it’s going to cost, so that we can be sure that everything is accounted for in our budget coming up, but things like new technology, training, safety things that we’ll be doing, educating, because educating the public is one of the main things that we’re doing now, because with all the new residents here, it’s very difficult to get the message out, what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and what the public can do to help us. So all of these things are in the strategic planning workshop today. So I think it’ll be very informative, and we do this every year, and strategic planning really guides the mosquito control operation. Also, in our regular meeting following, we will have our hurricane plan that’ll be introduced, and our guest speaker today – we usually have a guest speaker from some of the other county organizations – is today it’s Cory Schwisow, who is the director of Monroe County Emergency Management, talking about the emergency management plans for the county, because we are an integral part of that too, working with the county for emergency management should we have a hurricane, and should we have an emergency situation. This is something that’s very well planned out, so our hurricane plan will be discussed today, but it’s also already been discussed with all of our staff and rank and file. Everybody knows what they need to do should we have a hurricane coming in here. That’s something we prepare for all the time.”
After a storm is when mosquito-borne diseases can happen quickly.
Goodman said, “For a couple of days right after a storm, there’s usually not much mosquito activity, but it builds quickly after that because of all the debris. What we do when we first come back after a storm, and we’re back to the day after, right after the storm has passed, and our helicopters are coming back in, and we work with the Sheriff’s Department. We do a lot of recon over the county to survey the damage and things like this for a couple of days. That’s usually our job as well. Then we get into Mosquito Control within a couple of days. So, it’s very important to have a good plan and good communication, that’s what we work on.”
What about the no-see-ems?
Goodman said, “Ther’s a lot of misinformation about no-see-ums, and I wanted to really take this opportunity to explain a little bit about what we do, and why, what’s the limitations on controlling these? There’s about 50 different species of no-see-ums, and they’re really considered biting midges. These are a certain classification. Contrary to what people think, these are very easy to kill, I mean, every pesticide that we have kills them readily and quickly, but there’s a big difference between killing them and controlling them, and they are very difficult to control. Historically, they don’t carry disease, so they’re not really something that we’re supposed to control or have to control, but every time a truck goes out or sprays for pesticide, it does kill the no-see-ums. However, to really control them, and they breed everywhere, opposed to mosquitoes, which breed in the water. And then we can treat the water with larvicide and get them where they are breeding or hatching. This is how we control probably 80% of the mosquitoes, and that’s not possible with with no-see-ums because they breed in soil, they breed in the mud, they breed in moisture, so no chemical can penetrate to get them, so the only thing that you can do is kill them when they fly away, and to kill them when they fly away is quite difficult, because the time that they are out in the daytime is quite different than mosquitoes. They go by light, so they are out in the daylight. They start in the morning and they’ll be out at night at dawn and dusk, and so you need to spray to actually kill them, to actually hit them with the chemical to kill them, and so you have to be out and spray when they’re there. The same with mosquitoes, except mosquitoes are later in the evening, when you see our trucks, it’s after dark, usually 8, 9, 10, 11 o’clock at night. So, in order to kill no-see-ums and mosquitoes, you’d have to be in your neighborhood almost every day, and then you probably would not see a lot of difference. The main problem is because they’re just continuously breeding, and they don’t carry disease, so it’s better to use a repellent. If we treated them like you would have to to try to control them, the mosquitoes will become resistant because of the overuse of insecticides. So that’s why nobody anywhere is really trying to control no-see-ums because it’s really almost an impossibility. Now there’s one caveat to that. Two years ago there was a disease called Orpush, we’ve known about it for years, but two years ago, was the first time it ever showed up, and it was mainly in Cuba, and some South and Central American countries. There were a lot of people died in Cuba as a result of it, and there was a lot of introduction of travel related into Miami over 100 cases two years ago, but no local transmission, and this is transmitted by a no-see-ums, a particular biting midge called Coulicoitis paraensis, and this is available in Florida, but not in the Keys. We’ve never found this particular species in the Keys, and I can tell you, during this time, when this was a threat, a lot of health organizations, a lot of the Florida Mosquito Control Association were doing a lot of preparation in case this did become locally transmitted. What would we do to control it? And basically, the control would just be to spray, spray, spray, which would cause all the damage that I was mentioning, but it’s the only way we have to control this particular thing. Fortunately, it never happened, and these diseases go in cycles, sometimes 5, 10 years. So, right now, Orpush is not something on our radar, so we have some time, maybe, to do better planning, but this is some real technical science that has a lot of work is going on. Right now the best way to control the no-see-ums on your personal body is by use of repellents.”
What preparations does Mosquito Control do for the upcoming Memorial Day holiday?
Goodman said, “Right now in the Upper Keys, we do a series of what we call barrier treatments, which protects some of the foliage on the parks and the golf courses and recreational areas that allow this, so that there’s a residual on there that protects against mosquitoes for several rains, so this is what we’re doing right now in the Upper Keys, and also in the Middle and Lower Keys where it’s important to allow people to enjoy better the Memorial Day holiday.”
For more information, click here: https://www.keysmosquito.org/