The Foreclosure Fish Takes Over California
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 06.18.08
The mortgage crisis is not only wrecking peoples' lives, it's not doing much good for the environment, either. The swimming pools of abandoned homes are perfect mosquito breeding grounds, there are worries about rampant West Nile Virus infections. In California, authorities are using airplanes to find green pools and are filling them with the Gambusia affinis, or mosquito fish, which eats the larvae.
"They are real heroes," says Josefa Cabada, a technician at the Contra Costa Mosquito & Vector Control District, a government agency, in the Wall Street Journal. "I've never seen a mosquito in a pool with mosquito fish."
It has even been nicknamed the Foreclosure Fish. There is just one small problem....
According to Debora MacKenzie in the New Scientist, these fish (Gambusia species) are native to streams around the Gulf of Mexico. Outside their ancestral waters, they wreak havoc with local wildlife.
"In Europe, the fish developed a taste for everything but mosquito larvae, and have displaced native fish. In Australia Gambusia caused extinctions of native fish and amphibians. In California they have decimated native species - yet civic authorities will give you a bag of them free if you have a mosquito problem. It may not seem risky putting them in a plastic and concrete pool, but the fish are champion escape artists, and can travel in as little as three millimeters of water."
Perhaps a better approach might be to find a solution that puts people in these houses.
More Treehugger on the mortgage crisis:
Is America's Suburban Dream Collapsing?
Big Steps In Building: Survival, Not Suburbs
the better solution might be to convince more people to join the YMCA than to keep a pool at home. Of course being able to pay for your home being the prerequisite.
Drain the pool? Maybe take up skate boarding or tagging (with low/no VOC paint of course).
Why not just empty the pools?
I don't have a pool, but can't you just drain them? yes it's a waste of water and might cause damage, somehow, but I think anyone moving into a house with a pool that looks that bad would do the same thing. Maybe they want to refil it with salt water and forget the chlorine? No mosquitos and healthier swimming water?
is it so hard to just drain the pool?
I think it is just time to not go to such crazy lengths to fight off a perceived problem. Just let the mosquito's have their way in there, who cares if there is a minute chance that west nile infected mosquito's could be breeding in there, im sure the native predators of mosquito's would keep a solid control on them if there habitat didn't get leveled...
Really there are two options here:
1) Fog / add fish
PRO: Fog mosquito's or add said fish to mosquito breeding grounds and there is the slight very slight possibility that you have prevented west nile infected mosquito's from breeding.
CON: you have just polluted the environment with chemical's killing mosquito's and possibly some of their predators (fog) or further worsened the invasive species issue killing out native species
CONCLUSION: a small chance to prevent something = guaranteed negative side effect
2) do nothing
PRO: no chemicals poison the area killing mosquito's and their predators, no one is exposed to the chemicals causing asthma, breathing problems. No fish are getting into the natural environment and killing off native species upsetting the ecosystems balance
CON:there is a slight chance west nile carrying mosquito's could bread, possibly infecting humans, may kill young kids and elderly folk.
CONCLUSION: A small possibility to proliferate west nile with no damage done to the environment or ecosystem.
It is far to often that humans jump to prevent the possibility of a risk only to do more harm in the process.
on a side note, i am a pool owner
there is a chance with certain pools that in time the pool will cave in if left emtpy. emptying a pool is no easy feat either as i have had to do it once. The first time it rains you still have enough water in the pool to bread mosquito's
Unfortunately depending on the type of inground pool and the water table of the surrourding ground, if you empy a pool for a longish period of time, it can pop out of the ground or crack and become structurally unsound.
Plus emptying it doesn't mean that it won't fill up from rain. Probably not an issue in CA, but in FL that would happen with all the summer rains.
Alex said:
"CON:there is a slight chance west nile carrying mosquito's could bread, possibly infecting humans, may kill young kids and elderly folk."
I guess you've never been somewhere where Malaria is a huge problem eh?
If you just leave the pools alone to breed mosquitoes, it won't take very long at all for "slight chance of west nile (or other mosquito-borne diseases)" to turn into "high chance of west nile", and you'll be asking why the government didn't forsee this enormous problem coming (because it would be obvious to you, especially in retrospect) and Do Something About It.
Alex said:
"CON:there is a slight chance west nile carrying mosquito's could bread, possibly infecting humans, may kill young kids and elderly folk."
I guess you've never been somewhere where Malaria is a huge problem eh?
If you just leave the pools alone to breed mosquitoes, it won't take very long at all for "slight chance of west nile (or other mosquito-borne diseases)" to turn into "high chance of west nile", and you'll be asking why the government didn't forsee this enormous problem coming (because it would be obvious to you, especially in retrospect) and Do Something About It.
"Maybe they want to refil it with salt water and forget the chlorine?"
I know many people around here are using salt instead of chlorine, so it sounds like a feasible solution.
I think the setup actually makes chlorine from the salt and water but not certain on that.
Not sure how often salt has to be added either.
Even better, extract algae from pools and make biodiesel! Mosquito larvae will be killed in the process.
For goodness sakes...
DRAIN THE POOLS!!!!!!!!!!!!
There are plenty of native fish that will eat mosquito's. I don't live in California or Florida but I know plain ol' minnows work around here.
Why does it have to be a mosquito fish? I've noticed that in pond supply stores they sell them too. They act like these fish are the only ones who eat mosquito larvea. This is definately not the case.
It shouldn't even be legal to sell these fish for purposes like that, knowing they will eventually be disposed of and probably right along with the water into a water source.
well even in draining the pool..you dont have to waste the water..it can be used to water vegitation after it sits long enough that the chemicals have broken down. . . usually 2-3 weeks
A little off the subject, but why do you say, "The mortgage crisis is... wrecking peoples' lives?" Did this happen completely independent of homeowners getting in over their heads? Maybe we should start looking a little bit closer to home to find the cause of this problem.
I think putting the fish in is a good idea because even if the pool is empty when it rains there will be a little water in the pool.
Using a fish thats native to the area would be a better idea. But the civic authorities would need a large supply of them. One of the reasons this particular fish is being used is its easy and cheap to get.
Why not fill the pools with dirt?
"I guess you've never been somewhere where Malaria is a huge problem eh?
If you just leave the pools alone to breed mosquitoes, it won't take very long at all for "slight chance of west nile (or other mosquito-borne diseases)" to turn into "high chance of west nile", and you'll be asking why the government didn't forsee this enormous problem coming (because it would be obvious to you, especially in retrospect) and Do Something About It."
Didn't realize california had a malaria problem. I am not sure how enormous a problem like this could get. For one how many abandoned houses are out there that have a pool full of water? Secondly west nile virus isn't a death sentence. There is a chance elderly or very you could die from it but healthy matured humans generally survive it.
This whole problem depends how much weight gets put on a gauranteed outcome versus a potential outcome. Again, and it seems clear, that many will put the CHANCE at saving human life above guaranteed damage to non human life / human life down the road.
on another side note, any form of pool sanitation will not work without upkeep or equipment. For example in order for salt systems to work they require a special system that turns the salt into chlorine. Pools maintained with just chemicals need to have chemicals added weekly with the pump running to mix them and stabalize them. metal ion systems are designed to mainly only deal with bacteria and algae and will generally not harm any larger organizms (ecosmart pool system is awesome for this). So in short unless someone is there and running the pump/adding chemicals/running the sanitizers the longest the sanitation will last is a few weeks. If you drain the pool could collapse.
Now im not sure if salt water is a different story, maybe mosquito's cant breed in salt water. So only option is to leave it full and look for other options.
Mosquitoes lay eggs in standing water around your home. Doughnut-shaped Mosquito Dunks float on water and slowly release bacillus thuringiensis — a natural pesticide lethal to mosquito larvae. Place all-natural dunks anywhere water is left standing for more than a week. Safe for birdbaths, rain barrels, ponds, ditches, tree holes, roof gutters, unused swimming pools, and anywhere else water collects. A single dunk destroys mosquito larvae in up to 100 square feet of water for a month. You can buy them at some hardware stores or online at Gaiam.com.
My dad breeds guppies and feeds them mosquito larvae. Apparently guppies were released into the gutters in Sri Lanka when he was a boy to keep the mosquito population down. Feeder guppies are really inexpensive in pet stores. If you want to buy some guppies from my dad in So. Cal, check out my blog and send me a note! Otherwise, go check out your local pet store. I'm sure he'll take excess guppies off people's hands too.