Just as our bodies react to mosquito bites by inflaming surrounding tissue, our bodies also react to this parasite by rushing resources to the site of entry, leaving itchy, red inflammation. This unwelcome parasite doesn’t live long in the human body: our immune systems recognize the foreign invader and attack it. In its simplest terms, swimmer’s itch is a reaction caused by a parasite entering a swimmer’s body. While we’ll never be able to totally eradicate swimmer’s itch from Higgins Lake, even those who initially had doubts about the effectiveness of our program are once again swimming and using the lake without fear.The biological mechanisms of swimmer’s itch are quite complex, and the red, raised bumps that characterize it are a side effect of the life cycles of rather resourceful flatworms that inhabit Northern Michigan lakes. That translates to a snail infection level of less than 0.05%. The results are in (AFTER Year 2 of Our Control Program tab)… our control program reduced the lake-wide snail infection levels on Higgins Lake by 98%!! We examined over 8000 snails in 2017 and found only 4 to be infected with the swimmer’s itch parasite. In fact, numerous people who used Higgins Lake in 2016 commented on how nice it was not to have to worry about getting hammered with swimmer’s itch. As expected, swimmer’s itch case reports were also significantly lower than in 2015.
If you click on the 2016 data (AFTER Year 1 of Our Control Program tab), you will see that we were able to significantly and dramatically decrease the lake-wide snail infection levels to 0.28%. Not surprisingly, the number and severity of swimmer’s itch reports we received that year were at an epidemic level. If you combine all the data from 2015 (BEFORE Our Control Program tab), the lake-wide snail infection rate on Higgins Lake in 2015 was 3.0%.
Glen lake swimmers itch professional#
Based on decades of professional experience working on swimmer’s itch on numerous lakes in the USA we’ve determined that any snail infection level greater than 2% corresponds to swimmer’s itch being at an epidemic level. One of the first thing we did was assess the level of swimmer’s itch on the lake by examining the lake-wide snail infection levels. In 2014 the Higgins Lake Swimmer’s Itch Organization (HLSIO) asked us to design and implement a comprehensive swimmer’s itch control program for Higgins Lake. After treatment the ducks are released unharmed near the point of capture, but on a lake where the snail intermediate hosts are not present. Our control programs involve capturing and treating infected ducks with the same drug that veterinarians use to kill dog and cat parasites. Until recently the only option available to lake associations and government agencies was to treat lakes with large quantities of copper sulfate, a chemical that indiscriminately kills a wide variety of plant and animal species, including the snails which harbor the itch-causing parasites.Ĭoncerned with the potential negative long-term environmental effects of using copper sulfate, the Swimmer’s Itch Solutions, LLC Team developed an alternative control program which has been used successfully on several lakes in Michigan and Maine since 1991 ( Journal of Parasitology 87(2): 424-426). We offer ecological and environmentally-friendly SOLUTIONS
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