We all need cheering up and I regard that as a major contribution.Living aboard through every summer in a mosquito area where my marina is in the NE Italian lagoons, the only solution was to close up the companionway and fore-hatch with netting before dusk - not comfortable in temperatures in the upper 30s. It just wasn't practicable (or healthy) to continually use repellents on skin or aerosols to breath in.
That was for the normal European mosquito that emerged in the evening and was nocturnally active. Over the past few years we started to get the Asian Tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus), a far more aggressive insect that is faster and more difficult to swat and that operates during the day too.
It has spread beyond its Mediterranean introduction area, helped by climate change and European warmer winters, as far as Holland and here in Switzerland. It is now a serious public health emergency, being a vector for 20 diseases, according to the European Environmental Agency, including dengue, zika and yellow fever viruses. See its current known distribution here.
I try my best.
I think they must have been old-fashioned ones because I managed to account for a goodly number during the course of a very long night. A few weeks later we returned and a change in the weather meant that there were none.
I had wondered if your Gouda experience was due to the Tiger species as Holland is a known habitat.
In fact, Holland is itself responsible for its inundation and not because of the natural spread northwards that currently infects neighbouring countries, Germany, for example. Dutch plant importers were responsible for eggs and larvae transported from SE Asia in cut bamboo stalks where the open segments contained contaminated water.
The original European importation is said to be from rainwater in old tyres landed in Genoa.
A very interesting link. Thank you for posting it.
