I have met so many people from so many different government agencies, but it is great to see how they all work together on a common mission. The state and county offices share knowledge and resources in the fight to study and control the mosquito population. I travelled to the county offices of Hunterdon and Cape May County to get supplies, meet their teams and plan my strategy for trapping and collecting mosquito samples. I had never been to these areas of NJ and they are beautiful areas full of both wide open spaces, marshy waterways and thick forests.
I spent the next two weeks following the Cape May County team to learn how to trap, collect and preserve samples. We traveled to some remote locations, only discoverable by looking for certain clues on trees or obscure road indicators. Look for the pink ribbon on the tree and the site is close by!
We set up the different style traps at collection sites that are carefully selected for the best possible outcome. Each trap can't be too close to the other traps and some traps are on the ground and others hang from trees. They are left in place overnight and picked up the next day
These sites are the home of many flying insects, spiders and other wildlife. As soon as you get out of the car, you are swarmed by deer flies buzzing and nipping at you. Ticks are abundant and, of course mosquitos. But other creatures are landing in these traps as well. Emptying them is an ordeal! I was not prepared to regularly see BLACK WIDOW spiders! The team carefully removes the spiders from the trap and move on!
After the samples are collected, they are placed in a cooler of dry ice for preservation and transported to the lab for processing where they are sorted by mosquito type. Who knew there were so many different types of mosquitos!
