Yes, we have mosquitoes in Northern Alberta… many, many mosquitoes. I came across some neat facts today about them in Social Studies: The Best of the Globe and Mail’s Daily Miscellany of Information. My comments are in italics.

- “Mosquito” is Spanish for gnat and originally applied to many small species of bloodsuckers.
- Worldwide, there are about 3,400 species of mosquitoes. Canada has at least 77 species. The tropics have the most varieties, but the father north you go, the greater the number of individual skeeters. Northern mosquitoes buzz louder, land harder and itch more. I knew it!
- Canadian researchers in the Arctic have reported a rate of 9,000 bites a minute. That would drain a person’s blood in two hours. For the record, in all my life, I’ve never experienced 9,000 bites a minute! Not even close… that is crazy! And who would ever sign up to be the bait for that experiment!
- It is the females who bite, to get sustenance for their eggs. Male mosquitoes feed entirely on plant juices. Activity peaks at dawn and dusk. It takes 90 seconds for a biter to become fully gorged. A well-fed female can fly carrying twice her normal weight in blood.
- Hungry mosquitoes will attack a warm billiard ball, but they prefer people. They are attracted by carbon dioxide, lactic acid, moisture, and warmth; nervous, fidgety people are twice as likely to be bitten as calm individuals. Stay calm! Mosquitoes are twice as attracted to blue as any other colour, and have a yen for people who eat bananas. Accumulated sweat is also a turn-on. And it isn’t for your fellow-paddlers! Although you may be tempted to throw hygiene to the wind, don’t let yourself get too stinky or you’ll regret it!
- Some species prefer to attack birds or reptiles. Charles Hogue, an entomologist at the University of Southern California, has said that only 10 percent of the world’s species are interested in biting humans and far less than that carry diseases.
- A mosquito bite begins to itch after about three minutes. This allergic reaction can diminish over the spring and summer as a person develops a tolerance; the bumps will be smaller and won’t hurt as much. However, moving to a new region and being bitten by a different species means building a tolerance all over again.

There are a few other points that I know personally. The first ones of the year, in May, are slow and stupid. The later generations (or species) to hatch are much faster and hungrier — positively fierce! When you’re far enough north, there’s no getting away from the bugs — mosquitoes use standing water to lay their eggs in, and blackflies use moving water. So, mosquitoes don’t tend to be as bad along a river, unless there are sloughs or ponds around as well. Blackflies are more abundant farther north, along the Mackenzie River in the Northwest Territories, for example.

Bats are voracious mosquito-eaters, consuming a few hundred in flight in one night. Dragonflies will eat them as well, which makes them my favourite insect.

So what if they outnumber humans 1,000,000 to 1! Let me share my best defenses:

- A bug jacket or hat. When it’s warm, the jacket is great because then you don’t need to wear layers. The bug hat saved my sanity one evening on the Peace River. I just couldn’t swat them as fast as they landed, and do anything else with my hands, like putting things away for the night. So, I put on the bug hat, sprayed bug dope on my hands, and went about my work. Which leads me to…

- Mosquito repellent. Bug dope. Whatever you want to call it, it is definitely helpful at keeping the skeeters off you. The problem is, it’s a pretty nasty chemical, which is why there are warnings on the bottle. Don’t put on skin under clothing. Don’t reapply too many times. Don’t put it on young children. One warning they don’t include: Don’t spray your hands and then wipe your eyes! Yeow! In the photo above, number 4 has the highest deet, but number 1 or 5 will also work, and number 2 to a lesser degree.

- Organic bug spray, Orega Spray, made of oil of oregano, clove, wild lavender and wild bay leaf, is a great option if you’d like to stay away from the pesticides (number 3 in the photo). I wouldn’t use it in the bush, but I tested it in our back yard, it was quite effective. It would probably be effective in the bush, but since it makes you smell like an Italian restaurant, that might attract bears. I’m pretty sure they like Italian! Oh, did I mention that it’s expensive? Essential oils aren’t cheap!

- Antihistamines. If you get very itchy from mosquito bites, you can reduce your allergic response by taking antihistamines in advance. Vitamin C is a natural antihistamine, so you can try 2,000 – 4,000 mg per day. You will pee out the extra vitamin C that your body doesn’t need, but if you are having an allergic response, your body will use it!

Let’s start by looking at a natural river, the Hay River. The blue line is this year’s measurements, and the historical values are indicated by the dotted lines, with the fine red line being the historical average:

Look at the historical values. You can see the peak of spring run-off quite clearly, and the whole graph has a certain “downhill slant,” doesn’t it? Now, let’s try the Chinchaga, another natural river:

Again, there seems to be a peak showing spring run-off, with a gradual decrease throughout the year. The blue line almost looks like handwriting, written with a left-leaning slant. This is the way it should look — rain showers cause peaks and then the water flow gradually decreases.

Now let’s look at the Peace River, controlled by two dams (but really, just the second one, the Peace Canyon Dam). Hudson’s Hope, the monitoring station closest to the dam, looks like this:

The first big difference you’ll notice is the blue line, the annual data (this one is from last year, because this year’s graph has a lot of gaps in it). It goes up and down like crazy, doesn’t it? Well, that’s exactly what the water level near Hudson’s Hope does. The dam HUGELY affects the amount of water flowing downstream, and when it releases extra water due to additional electricity demand, it shows. The water level can easily go up 3 or 4 feet overnight (or in any short period). Some of those variations are 420-1050 cubic metres of water per second — 2.5 times the volume (for example, from August 2-5)! This graph is on a logarithmic (log) scale, so notice how the lines are closer together below 1000, which can make the variation appear smaller. Log graphs are used when there is a large variation in the data being displayed (no kidding).

But let’s not forget to look at the historical figures. They don’t look quite right, do they? There is no peak spring run-off — instead, the water level decreases when it is supposed to increase (May-June). We don’t even see a peak for all that snow in the mountains melting! That’s because it’s all captured in Williston Reservoir and held back for controlled release by the dams. This confirms what I noticed while paddling. The shores didn’t look as they should. They don’t have a gradual muddy cliff-bank, with lots of horizontal layering. Compare these two photos:

Muddy bank near La Crete, showing layers near waterline, indicating a gradual change in water level

Shores near Taylor, not showing muddy bank or layering along shore

Let’s look a few more graphs for the Peace River. Here’s Taylor, BC, almost 100 km downstream:

Still a lot of unnatural variation in the annual data, but is that a small peak I see near the beginning of June? Perhaps; the water level is now affected by the dams PLUS a couple of rivers, the Halfway River and the Pine (depending on exactly where the monitoring station is — I don’t remember seeing it). Let’s go a little farther, to the town of Peace River (375 km downstream):

Looks similar to the Taylor graph, doesn’t it? Except now the blue line has less-radical variations — the river has had some time to even out the effect of those huge water releases. Also notice that the overall volume has gone up quite a bit — above 1000 — whereas at Hudson’s Hope, it was generally below 1000. That’s because several rivers and a hundred creeks have added their water to the Peace by now. But, still no spring run-off peak in the historical data.

Let’s look at one more, the farthest point that is monitored, Peace Point, approx 1115 km downstream of Hudson’s Hope:

This is the closest the Peace River comes to looking like a natural river, and the shape of the historical curve still isn’t right. It’s interesting to note that the data used for the historical quantities starts in 1967, one year before the Bennett dam opened. I guess they thought they should monitor the river level, which is good in terms of trying to understand the effects of the dam(s), but they didn’t start enough years ahead to get a pre-dam historical baseline, to see what the spring runoff was really like. Many environmentalists believe that the Peace-Athabasca delta, a Ramsar site of International importance, is suffering because without that mighty inflow of water once a year, some areas of the delta do not receive the water they need. If we extrapolated what the Hay River spring run-off peak looks like and imagined it on the Peace River graph, it would reach discharge levels of almost 10,000 (at least 8,000, I’d estimate).

I know there is some debate about how the dams affect the Peace-Athabasca Delta, and if you read the wikipedia page, it doesn’t sound like there’s any problem. Just remember what wikipedia is: an open document. Anyone can edit what he/she sees there. It can be slanted by opinion and altered by those with an agenda. I’m not saying it isn’t great! Just that it isn’t always, necessarily, 100% true.