ROWLEY – Where are the mosquitoes?
Not that anyone's complaining, but since spring has sprung throughout Essex County, residents have been buzzing about the decreased number of bloodsucking pests that typically accompany rising local temperatures.
Just this week, the director of Northeast Massachusetts Mosquito Control, Walter Montgomery, confirmed freshwater mosquito populations have definitely been lower than normal this spring and attributes the decrease to the early snow melt, which decreased the pools of standing water mosquitoes need for their larvae to grow.
"We had a ton of snow this year, and everyone anticipated because of that snow the wetland areas would fill up and there would be a ton of mosquitoes," Montgomery said. "But the snow cover was gone by the end of March, so the spring ended up being dryer than normal. We don't think freshwater mosquitoes are going to be a big issue this spring."
Montgomery stressed it's too early to start planning that Memorial Day "dusk" barbecue, however.
"It's still early yet," he said. "We could get a week of rainy weather next week, and that could change everything."
He also stressed while freshwater mosquitoes aren't thriving, the Great Marsh is teeming with its own breeds of mosquito larvae — earlier than last year in fact — due to the warmer temperatures experienced in April.
His team of scientists fanned out across Salisbury, Newbury, Newburyport and Rowley this week and found conditions were emerging in the marsh for the birth of a large brood of new mosquitoes. His group planned to spray this week for two to three days to get a jump on those larvae.
"We're a little ahead of schedule this year, and we're anticipating doing an aerial application probably Wednesday," Montgomery said. "It's a little earlier than we typically do that. We had a stretch of warm weather, which triggered things in the salt marsh a little earlier."
Asian tiger mosquito in Essex County?
This year, Northeast Massachusetts Mosquito Control will continue testing mosquito populations throughout the spring and summer, and will deploy a new trap — the BG Sentinel Trap — which has proven more effective in attracting the Asian tiger mosquito.
This mosquito is a known carrier of chikungunya, a debilitating virus known to cause severe headaches, chills, nausea, vomiting and extreme joint pain. A chikungunya epidemic broke out in Italy last summer, and local personnel collected several Asian tiger specimens last year but couldn't confirm identification due to their poor condition.
"We found what we thought were specimens last year, but they were so degraded it was hard to make a positive ID," Montgomery said. "They've spread dramatically and become New Jersey's dominant mosquito problem."
Montgomery states although the virus spread by this mosquito has not presented itself in the United States, he likens the possibility of an epidemic to that of the West Nile virus some years ago.
"Previous to 1999 if you said we might get West Nile virus, no one would have believed you," Montgomery said. "We're not trying to be alarmist. The rational way to do mosquito control is to think ahead and have management strategies to address problems before they become large."
Montgomery said that while chikungunya rarely proves fatal, it makes large numbers of people sick for extended periods of time, with up to weeks or months of debilitating symptoms.
"They affect large numbers of population," he said. "It's not just a few people. In Indonesia, it was 2 million."
He explained with West Nile virus there has to be a bird involved in the carrying of the virus. Chikungunya is much more easily contracted.
"It can be readily transmitted from person to person by mosquito bite."
