2 minute read
Walloon Lake & Swimmer’s Itch
By Russ Kittleson, WLAC Board Vice President
PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE
Not too many years ago, an eagle was plucking a merganser duck out of Walloon Lake by our cottage. Our reaction was that maybe one less person will now get Swimmer’s Itch (SI). Well, that is still true, but now it is much more complex with so many more variables.
The Walloon Lake community and the WLAC have been an integral force in the elimination and prevention of SI. We have been involved in many leading studies and collaborations. Our recent studies determined that infected feces of a merganser duck (80% are infected) interface with a certain variety of snail and produce a worm called a cercariae. When this tiny worm lands on a human it immediately penetrates the skin and causes a very itchy red welt.
What is the solution? Well, let’s just remove snails from the lake! Unfortunately, this is almost impossible as snails also provide many positive influences. Ok, then let’s remove the ducks! Many lakes did this very expensive process of removing and relocating waterfowl to an approved location hundreds of miles away, but the result was a very small reduction of Swimmer’s Itch.
Without a viable solution, we had volunteers, or “Citizen Scientists,” collect water samples to provide more information. Over the past three years, we collected almost 1,000 samples from ten locations around Walloon Lake. We also did about twenty bird counts - an entire lake identification of numbers, variety, and locations of all birds on Walloon at approximately the same time. Our partner in the analysis was a company named Freshwater Solutions, with their leading research specialist.
The results were very compelling:
1 Migratory merganser ducks were just as much a contributor to Swimmer’s Itch as resident mergansers. So removing the broods that live year round would not solve the problem.
2 The biggest discovery was that Canadian geese and a newly discovered snail variety are just as much, if not more, of the problem. We all know how headcounts of Canadian geese have increased each year.
3 There is a very good chance that other varieties of waterfowl also contribute including mallards, swans, etc.
This year we are shifting our emphasis and beginning “Project Prevent.” This will include education and an effort to help develop an effective cream or remedy. We also have a reporting tool on the WLAC website (www. walloon.org) for you to submit any cases and help us track locations around the lake. It is also important to note that more than 50% of humans never get Swimmer’s Itch.
We wish there was an easy solution, but remember that lakes all over the world have had this problem as far back as recorded history; it’s not just isolated to Walloon.
Here are a few easy practices that our research has proven to help you reduce or prevent SI:
1 Swim in deeper water as there are less cercariae.
2 Swim later in the day as cercariae are less active.
3 Keep moving when in the water as motion makes it harder for worms to penetrate your skin.
4 Towel off immediately after leaving the water.
We will keep working diligently towards finding a solution. Hope you have a great season on the best lake ever!
