Phil Goodman, Florida Keys Mosquito Control District 2 Commissioner, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s been going on with the mosquitoes.
Mosquito season is in full swing.
Goodman said, “We had a lot of rain during the winter, where it was wetter than normal for us. So mosquito season, some people say it really never ended last year, it’s really been going on all year. We had rains, a couple of weeks ago, I think in some parts, as much as seven inches in the Keys, but all up and down the Keys. We were able to get after those mosquitoes, the larvicide were put out so everything was treated well and we had about 17 truck missions. So everything was moving well, but then this wind moved in and we still have not been able to do our evening trucking missions to get rid of some of these adult mosquitoes in various parts of the Keys. We’re looking at this daily to see if the wind dies down enough so that we can get our trucks out. But so far, we haven’t been able to do what we wanted to do. We’ve done a lot of hand trading. After this last rain, the first three days in April, we had 25% more service calls for mosquito control than we normally do in the whole month of April. So it’s really started off with a bang. We should have them under control now, but this wind has delayed some of our treatments. We’re hoping to get back into this really soon. We have 45 different species of mosquitoes here in the Florida Keys, I think we’re already seeing all of them have been well represented here. Two species in particular that we keep close attention. One is the Saltmarsh mosquito. This is the one that we really see the most of right now. This is what has resulted in most of the service requests. But we’re also seeing the Aedes aegypti mosquito, the numbers are up in a number of areas in the Keys. This is the mosquito that transmits several different diseases, including dengue and Zika. So we’re looking very closely with that. The numbers have not been high enough that we will start our aduticide missions for it, but certainly larvicide missions would be in full swing right now. We certainly want to keep Dengue fever out of the Florida Keys.”
Do the winds keep the mosquitos from swarming?
Goodman confirmed, “Once it gets up, they don’t really fly that much. They more or less hunker down onto a branch and stay there. So we don’t see much activity, but the numbers of them are growing. They’re continuing to mate and lay eggs during this time. We can really get behind after a long, wind event here in the Florida Keys. So that’s the concerning thing. It may look like there’s not as many mosquitos there because they’re just not flying around in this wind. But they’re still there.”
The number of cases of Dengue fever have been increasing worldwide.
Goodman said, “Worldwide, the numbers are really high and growing. Before 1970, there were only seven countries in the world where Dengue fever was endemic. Now there are over 100 and all of South Central America, the Caribbean islands, the South Atlantic islands, most of those countries and islands, this disease is endemic. Puerto Rico, just really their public health emergency they just declared a few weeks ago. Of course, Cuba has been in epidemic now for about three years or more. People coming into the US from these countries and bringing it in, they don’t know they have it, but during this period of time where they are infected, but they’re not showing symptoms, they come to the US, and then they get sick. One of our local Aedes aegypti mosquito bites them, and then you have it here locally. That’s really been happening a lot in Miami. They are again, having Dengue continuing this year. Last year was a record year for Dengue in Miami, really in the United States, from Miami, the worst outbreak in over 70 years, and it’s continuing there. So far, we’ve been able to keep it out of the Keys. Last year, we didn’t have it here. I think our robust program, very proactive program has kept it out. But we are still on high alert, because this certainly can happen and we’re doing everything we can to prevent it.”
This week is Florida Mosquito Control Awareness week.
Goodman said, “One of the things we’re doing all over Florida is trying to raise the awareness of what people can do to keep themselves safe and to be sure that they’re not breeding Aedes aegypti mosquito on their property. So starting today, in the Key Largo area, we’ve picked this out because there are the increasing numbers in Key Largo area of Aedes aegypti , for this week, we’re going to be doing an all hands on deck sweep of Key Largo. Our inspectors are all converging on Key Largo. we’re going house to house and offering to inspect their property, to walk with the homeowners over to see if they are breeding mosquitoes there and what they can do to eliminate them and trying to find more hotspots so that we can eliminate to keep our people safe. So if our people are coming to your door, you see them, please let them onto your property and walk with them and learn what you can do to protect yourselves.”
What can homeowners do to protect their properties?
Goodman said, “We live on about 30 islands in the Florida Keys, but there are hundreds of islands here and mosquito control treats a lot of those offshore islands, because there’s just sources of mosquitoes that that can come to where we live, work and play. There’s probably more than 1,000 breeding sites that we know of in the Florida Keys that mosquito control is treating regularly. So what we’re trying to do is to keep the mosquitoes from coming outside onto your property, and where we work, live and play. You’ve got about over 50,000 home sites in the Florida Keys and businesses, and they can also be breeding sites. Walk around your property to be sure that you’re not breeding mosquitoes on your property. Dump outstanding water, this is probably the best thing that you can do. Because if you have mosquitoes breeding around your home, it’s a high likelihood that they’re the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes because they like to live around people. So walk around your home regularly, dump out standing water. If you think you’ve got breeding sites there and you need assistance, please call mosquito control or put in a service request through our app our website and one of our inspectors will come out and walk over your property, identifying the breeding sites, eliminate them and give you a lot of information of what you can do to prevent those breeding sites from returning. So that’s really the main thing that homeowners can do.”
How are the remote islands around the Florida Keys treated for mosquitos?
Goodman said, “We do it by aircraft. We also have inspectors that actually have boats that we visit the offshore islands regularly, walk around looking for breeding sites, because they do breed and depending on the wind direction there, they blow them into the residence. So we know which ones breed and we know which ones affect our residents. So we treat them routinely. We’ve also got a lot of new technology like trail cameras that we place on these remote sites, so that we can, through our phones, we can look and see if there’s water, how much water is on those sites. Then we go out and treat them. So that prevents us from going out there and finding that they’re not breeding. So we’re pretty efficient on that. And we’ve been doing that for quite a long time.”
A board meeting happened recently.
Goodman said, “We had three committee meetings on very important topics for mosquito control. Our workshop, which was our annual strategic planning workshop. We’ve been heavily involved in strategic planning now for more than 10 years, and it really pays off for us. (We have) a three year plan to continuously improve our mosquito control program. So a lot of initiatives on there, new programs, new technologies, capital expenditure projects that we have. we usually do this every year, about two months before our we start our budget process in June so that we can be sure that any initiatives that we have on our strategic plan can be funded, if that’s needed. So this was also a very enlightening workshop. A lot of things are going on right now. I think we are in the midst of a real technology boom for mosquito control, a lot of new technologies coming out, chemical technologies and non chemical technologies. We are working hard to take advantage of the ones that seem to be something that would help us here in the Florida Keys. So we’re always looking. So strategic planning for us is very important. Just like Ben Franklin said, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail, and our mission is too important to fail. So we work hard at good, good strategic planning, and then making it happen.”
The Oxitec project will not be used this year.
Goodman explained, “We operated Oxitec under a three year experimental use permit from the EPA, that was the plan, because the EPA needed a lot of data to study, to be sure, to determine whether this was a viable program, in their opinion. So for the last three years, we did releases, very controlled releases, very scientific based experiments that were done. A lot of data, pages and pages of information sent to the EPA and the results were very good. We saw the numbers of Aedes aegypti are being reduced in these test areas just like they were supposed to. We hope that someday we’ll be able to do this county wide or at least in the hotspot areas. So now all the data is into the EPA, they are studying it. They told us that we will not hear from them until maybe late this year or sometime next year. So we’re hoping that they will approve it so that we can take advantage of this next year. Now what we’re doing this year, we’re not just sitting on our hands this year. We’re doing a lot of work trying to solve some of the logistic concerns that we have about how to deploy it better. We know how we want to do it, but we are trying to fine tune it, looking at the box, just how can we put these out to be really stable during some kind of a storm? Or do we have to bring these in? How will we coordinate our larviciding with the release of these? There’s a lot of things that we can do internally and we’re working with Oxitec this year to do those, but we’re not really releasing any Oxitec mosquitoes this year. But a lot of work is going on. So that whenever this is approved, we’ll be able to hit the ground running with a real program here that will help us.”
Maybe the No-See-Ums will be able to be affected at some point in the future, too.
Goodman said, “We had a workshop on No-See-Ums a few months ago. It’s a big concern for people because they see these and they think maybe mosquito control can control them. But we’re not allowed to control No-See-Ums specifically because they don’t carry disease and their breeding habits are such that it’s really impossible. Mosquitoes, we control them mainly by going to the breeding sites. The breeding sites for the No-See-Ums is everywhere and every day, so we would need to be spraying adulticide in every neighborhood, almost every day to make some improvement and still this wouldn’t t be enough and then the mosquitoes will become more resistant to our chemical spray. So it’s just not something that we can do.”
Monroe County is sponsoring a tire amnesty collection, starting this Saturday.
Goodman said, “It’ll run the next three Saturdays and it’ll be at Cudjoe transfer station, Long Key transfer station and Key Largo transfer station. We really support the tire amnesty. This is where you can take your old tires to these collection sites at no charge and they’ll take them off your hand. Mosquito Control usually does this once a year also. So we work very closely with the county on this because old tires are the ideal mosquito breeding sites. Once they get water in them, if they’re off the rim, you can never get the water out and it’s a perfect breeding site for Aedes aegypti. So we work really hard to try to keep the county free of just old tires laying around so if you have any of those, please go to the county website and look in and participate in this tire amnesty collection.”