Did you hear the buzz? I hope not, but once again it is mosquito Armageddon here on Cape Cod. A couple of years ago it was so bad that it was on the national news!
I got one of those mosquito netting hats, but you have to watch out when you come inside because the mosquitoes hitchhike inside on your clothes. We knew this was going to be a bad year for mosquitoes because…
They got one thing right though…Everybody knows that it’s a bad year for mosquitoes, even the finance committee. At its June 12 meeting, the committee unanimously voted to transfer $20,000 from the town’s reserve fund to help the Cape Cod Mosquito Control Project get deeper into the area of the Duck Harbor overwash, the main breeding ground in town for brackish-water mosquitoes.
This year’s mosquito problem might not be as bad as it was in 2021, when high tides first breached the Duck Harbor bank, but repeated flooding this winter and spring at Bound Brook Island means that this summer might come close. Town Administrator Tom Guerino said that he has received many complaints from residents in the area, and “It’s going to get worse before it gets better,” Guerino told the finance committee.
According to Guerino, Mosquito Control’s executive director Gabrielle Sakolsky told him that the agency doesn’t have the staff or the funding to get deeper into the overwash area, where the dense brush makes it harder to apply larvicide. Guerino said that the $20,000 will enable the agency to treat more areas.
Guerino said that the town’s reserve fund is currently sitting untouched at $100,000. The finance committee agreed that the transfer would meet the fund’s purpose, which is meant for unpredicted expenses. “A good mosquito is a dead mosquito,” said chair Kathleen Granlund. —
By the door at the cottage… I have a bottle of mosquito repellent.Winter Floods Set the Stage for More Mosquitoes
Flood waters abate and larvicide is sprayed, but a lot depends on the weather
Provincetown Independent
By William von Herff
May 1, 2024WELLFLEET — Barton Morris stands in the Duck Harbor parking lot and surveys the floodplain to the north. It’s a cool April day, and it’s been about two weeks since the last in a series of strong storms hit this beach. The storms pushed salt water over the dunes into this floodplain, creating puddles in the field of newly cut wood chips.
[…]
Wellfleet is wary about the bloodsuckers. In a January 2021 storm, the coastal bank at Duck Harbor was overwashed, storm waves pushing salt water into the pine forest here, killing it. Then, the water pooled, trapped on one side by the bank and on the other side by mosquito ditches dug long ago to keep water flowing but long since abandoned and clogged. These pools of stagnant water were the perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes.
In the summer that followed, the mosquito population in Wellfleet exploded to unprecedented levels. Morris, who is the assistant superintendent of the quasi-governmental Cape Cod Mosquito Control Project (CCMCP), said that traps in the area were capturing thousands of mosquitoes every day in summer 2021 (the one-day record was 5,642), when any number more than 200 is considered a problem by the agency.
Fortunately, Morris says, Duck Harbor isn’t much of an area of concern anymore. The trees have been felled, the ditches are clear, and the gap in the dunes has widened, allowing water to flow out more easily. Plus, he notes, the larger puddles have fish in them, and they eat mosquito larvae.
Remember mosquito money is blood money.
Well now, all of the mosquitos must have moved up to the Cape as we have hardly any where I live. I am near a large trac of wetlands by the Ct. River with a swamp right below the back of my house. I am not missing the mosquitos one bit but wondered the other day what the bats are going to eat.
ReplyDeleteWell any hungry bats you see tell them to come on up, we have gourmet saltmarsh mosquitoes, nice and plump with my blood.
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