Phil Goodman, Commissioner District Two, Board Chair of the 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.
Billions of mosquito eggs are being laid and awaiting spring rains.
Goodman confirmed, “Right now when we don’t have many soaking rains this time of year, and the rains that we do, since the ground is really dry, it soaks up, and so we don’t really see too much mosquito breeding right now from the rains. We do from the high tides. That’s the thing that we’re watching. Because when we have a full moon and we have a really high tide, we have a lot of breeding of mosquitoes taking place during that time, both salt marsh and the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. But right now, the numbers are low on all of these but the mosquitoes are out there laying billions of eggs right now along the edges of our waterways and where rain will eventually get so that we’ll have a lot. We see a lot of mosquitoes during the first rains and the high tides in the spring. But right now, mosquitoes are really under good control, all up and down the Keys, both the Aedes aegypti and the salt marsh mosquitoes.”
Mosquito borne diseases are always a worry, but there are none currently in the Keys.
Goodman said, “Mosquito borne diseases are on the rise worldwide. Before 1970 there were only about nine countries where diseases were endemic, that were based on the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which is the vector that we have here, those diseases are like yellow fever, Dengue fever, chikungunya, Zika, and a few others, but since 1970 there’s more than 100 countries that these diseases are endemic. Miami is a big hub for travel from Central and South America. So people are getting these diseases in these other countries, getting on a plane, coming here and getting bitten by local mosquitoes in Florida and bringing those diseases in. Right now we’re able to keep those numbers really low in the Keys, so we do not have any local transmission of any mosquito borne disease in the Keys right now. But Miami still is getting it. They’ve been constantly having it for the last 10 years. They keep it under fairly good control. Several years there’s been over 1,000 cases of imported Dengue fever in Miami. Last year, there was about 600 cases, so it was down a little bit, but right now, replacing it is another disease called chikungunya, and there were just last week, quite a few, I think 27 cases of imported chikungunya in Florida, mostly in Miami. And so Dengue is being replaced by chikungunya. So we are constantly being vigilant on this, looking for a local trend, I mean, for travel related diseases coming in, we had several last year of dengue fever, travel related, no local transmission.”
What happens when travel related cases are reported?
Goodman said, “When we the health department notifies us that we have a travel related case, we go into that neighborhood, and we’ve got a procedure, and we really try to eliminate every mosquito in there, because we don’t want that person to be bitten by an Aedes aegypti, to spread it to our mosquitoes. So that’s kind of the prescribed treatment, and we’ve been very successful with that, keeping it out. But it’s constant because we keep those numbers really low of the Aedes aegypti. But when you have a lot of wind and rain and you’re not able to treat, you can get behind. So it’s a constant threat for us, but one that so far we’ve been very successful to handle, and we’ll continue to work hard to keep the people here in the Florida Keys safe from these diseases.”
Severe joint pain can accompany the chikungunya disease.
Goodman said, “These are really all accompanied by severe bone pain. In fact, Dengue fever is called break bone fever, because it feels like your bones are breaking, it’s very painful, and it lasts usually a couple of weeks. And sometimes the neurological effects can last a lot longer. So it’s really a bad disease. These are really horrific diseases that we certainly don’t want to experience here in the Florida Keys.”
There’s some new chemical technology coming this year.
Goodman explained, “Last year, the EPA approved the first product that’s been approved in over 50 years for controlling adult mosquitoes and and it’s really timely, because one of the problems we have with the Aedes aegypti mosquito, it’s becoming resistant to some of the better chemicals that we use, so making it ineffective. And this is one of the reasons we’ve been looking for so much new technology, because without technology change within the next few years, it may be difficult to fight an epidemic of one of these diseases because our chemicals are not effective now. That’s not the case right now, but we’re being proactive. And there was a new chemical approved by the EPA late last year, and was approved by the Florida Agriculture Department, which regulates chemicals for pesticides in state, and we just approved it ourselves for use in the Florida Keys, just really a couple of months ago, for use in truck spraying. And we will begin using it this year. The Aedes aegypti, there is no resistance to it. It’s based on some new chemistry. We hope this will be a real improvement for us to be able to continue to keep the Aedes aegypti under control. Starting out, it’ll be used only in trucks. We hope to approve it this year for use in our aerial missions as well. But we’ll have to go through a series of tests to be sure that this is what we’re looking for. It does the job that we need, and it will also give us a third product that we can rotate in our trucks, because right now, there’s only two products that we can use to rotate in our trucks, and we have to rotate these also to keep resistance down, because if you spray a chemical too much, the mosquito becomes resistant to it. And we don’t have that much new technology because mosquito control market is a relatively small market worldwide. It’s about a billion dollar market from the chemical standpoint, and that’s not really enough to attract a lot of attention for new developments in mosquito control technology for pesticides, because the cost to get through the EPA is millions to get a product approved. And so most of the products that we have in the past have come through the agricultural market, which that market is huge, and then they are adapted to mosquito control, the ones that are adaptable. So this is really new. We’re excited about it. And it gives us a new dimension this next year. So you’ll be hearing more about this product. It’s called ReMoa Tri.
The Florida Keys Mosquito Control District will meet tomorrow at 1 p.m. in Marathon.
Goodman said, “Tomorrow’s our February meeting and we have a lot of things on the agenda, but probably the most interesting thing right now for us is our workshop that we’re having on a new technology that’s new for us is Lidar, which stands for light detection and ranging. This last year we had a lot of new breeding sites because of rising tides, particularly in the Lower Keys and in the Upper Keys, a lot of new breeding sites. And last year we had quite a few. Normally, we have just a few new breeding sites, and it’s not a problem to find these, but we had so many this year, it’s like finding a needle in a haystack sometimes. These breeding sites are only active for about a week, and you can get just billions of mosquitoes coming off. And if you don’t find it, you can have mosquito problems, and this is one of the things that affected us last year, particularly early in the season. So Lidar technology is basically a camera that affixes to the bottom of your helicopter or drone, and it’s a mapping program that uses lasers to actually map the topography and changes of the topography. And it’s not new technology, but it’s new for mosquito control, because you can actually use this and go and when you’re flying over mangroves and a lot of dense foliage, you can actually depict where water is standing, water underneath there. So this is a big improvement for us to help us find these new breeding sites. And at our workshop tomorrow, we have some specialists from Mosquito Control in Lee County, Collier County and Manatee County started using this technology last year because they saw the need, because the hurricanes up the west coast of Florida kind of changed the topography the last few years, and they saw a lot of breeding sites, so they started using it for this. And now we think we can use this also for what we see here in the Florida Keys. So we’ll be getting a lot of expert advice tomorrow, and the board will make a decision about how we want to go with this. But I think we will probably go in one form or another with this, that will help us this particular season find these breeding sites. So we’re excited about that.”
Is mosquito control getting the funding needed from Tallahassee?
Goodman said, “When we were in Tallahassee two weeks ago and met with all of our legislators there, everyone was very concerned when you look at cutting back on property taxes. Everybody likes to save tax money, and we do too. But we also have to be funded, and mosquito control is such a critical part to our economy here and our way of life and our quality of life, that we want to be sure that we got funding. I think everybody agrees that mosquito control is such an important thing here that if they do make changes in property taxes, I think mosquito control, like the school system, and like some other critical services, will be taken care of. So I’m not overly concerned about it now, but we went up there really prepared to be sure that people understood the criticalness of mosquito control. Because it’s something that a lot of people forget about, because mosquitoes have been under pretty good control in the Florida Keys for a number of years, and people forget how bad it was before mosquito control, and how bad it could be without it. There’s really no difference in the number of mosquitoes in the Everglades than there are in the Florida Keys. The only difference is our mosquito control. We want to be sure people remember that we live in a tropical climate. Two thirds of our county is the Florida Everglades, so we are an area of state critical concern, which also makes us one of the most unique counties in the state, which also includes mosquito control. Because not only controlling mosquitoes, but protecting our environment is really top priority. Sometimes you have to achieve a balance between mosquito control and protecting the environment, and we’re always looking for that proper balance. So I think things in Tallahassee, I think will work out okay for mosquito control. Another thing that I think is important is the Florida Keys, we are a world leader. We’re a world class mosquito control and there’s Collier County, Lee County and the Florida Keys. We are really the leaders in the technology for mosquito control in the state of Florida and also the country and also in the world. When you look at developments that have been taking place, new technologies in the last 75 years, it’s mostly been in one of these three areas. People ask me, why so much technology here? This is where the mosquitoes are, and this is where we really need this technology. So it’s really working. We want to be sure people recognize the advantages of mosquito control, because there’s also a big part they can play in helping us control mosquitoes, particularly the disease carrying mosquitoes.”
For more information, click here: https://www.keysmosquito.org/