Fishing with mosquito nets

January 24, 2015 6:35 AM

Across Africa, from the mud flats of Nigeria to the coral reefs off Mozambique, mosquito-net fishing is a growing problem, an unintended consequence of one of the biggest and most celebrated public health campaigns in recent years. Unintended consequences and complicated trade-offs: Mosquito Nets for Malaria Spawn New Epidemic: Overfishing (SLNYT)
posted by Dip Flash (25 comments total)

I saw people using nets left behind by Peace Corps volunteers for fishing twenty years ago, but at that time they were rare and weren't being subsidized, so they weren't cheaper than regular fishing nets unless you scored a discarded net.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:39 AM on January 24, 2015

Aid and development projects need to think about the specific local context where they are distributing resources. As much as we would like, one solution cannot solve a thousand versions of a similar problem. Thanks for sharing this article!
posted by ChuraChura at 7:12 AM on January 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

Make the nets out of threat that slowly dissolves in water, like disappearing sutures.
posted by localroger at 7:36 AM on January 24, 2015

There is no solution that humans can't turn into a problem.
posted by Foosnark at 7:52 AM on January 24, 2015 [13 favorites]

I'm sure the founder of world's most popular operating system for personal computers will have a solution available for this challenge too.
posted by infini at 8:03 AM on January 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

Make the nets out of threat that slowly dissolves in water, like disappearing sutures.


With even my iPhone's water sensor going off in humid climates, I wonder if this would work? Would need to know how leaky most residences are where these nets are being used, too.
posted by mangasm at 8:49 AM on January 24, 2015

They should distribute fishing nets along with the mosquito nets in coastal area, and as said above, put water soluble links or marker die in mosquito nets.
posted by w0mbat at 9:31 AM on January 24, 2015

“People are very defensive about this topic,” said Amy Lehman, an American physician and the founder of the Lake Tanganyika Floating Health Clinic, which conducted the study. “The narrative has always been, ‘Spend $10 on a net and save a life,’ and that’s a very compelling narrative.

As usual, it's not about "them" it's about "us.'
posted by klanawa at 9:56 AM on January 24, 2015 [4 favorites]

Make the nets out of threat that slowly dissolves in water, like disappearing sutures.

I'm guessing that the nets are most useful, though, in places which are A) rainy (thus lots of mosquitoes being bred) and B) have not-very-well-sealed housing (thus lots of points of ingress for said mosquitoes). So I suspect that would make the nets less effective for their intended purpose.
posted by yoink at 11:43 AM on January 24, 2015

Yeah there's no way to make nets that don't fish. That's not the problem anyway
posted by fshgrl at 12:50 PM on January 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

"Make the nets out of threat that slowly dissolves in water, like disappearing sutures."

Why would we want less durable mosquito nets? The problem isn't that they can be used to fish, the problem is that African food security is so poor that the residents have no choice but to think short term. Isn't this desperation the exact same reason why Somalian fishermen became modern pirates? African countries suffer from problems that can only be solved through long-term investments in infrastructure, workforce training, and safeguards from institutional corruption. No amount of hand-wringing will change that.
posted by IShouldBeStudyingRightNow at 1:33 PM on January 24, 2015 [4 favorites]

I'm guessing that the nets are most useful, though, in places which are A) rainy (thus lots of mosquitoes being bred)

My guess would be the opposite on that. Where there are lots of mosquitoes, you're going to get bitten whether or not you have a net, unless mosquitoes in Africa are significantly different than the ones around here. I'd think nets would be more effective where you have a reasonable chance of avoiding mosquitoes during the time you're not under one.

I have a house that's mostly impervious to them, but when the talking head on the TV news says that the way to avoid getting West Nile disease is to avoid mosquitoes, all I can do is smile sadly and wonder what it's like to live in the city. That's not such a common disease though, it's hard to imagine what it would be like to be at risk of malaria every day.
posted by sfenders at 2:01 PM on January 24, 2015

My guess would be the opposite on that. Where there are lots of mosquitoes, you're going to get bitten whether or not you have a net

Your guess is wrong. My experience with mosquito nets is that they keep you bite free in very heavily infested shacks and tents.
posted by fshgrl at 3:07 PM on January 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

Actually, it turns out that there is some evidence that mosquito nets are more effective at reducing the rate of infection in areas where the rate of "infective bites" is lower to start with. But not by all that much. In any case they're surprisingly good at it.
posted by sfenders at 3:50 PM on January 24, 2015

Why don't they have subsidized fishing nets that have a larger mesh, no chemicals and handles to make them easier for fishing, then distribute those along with the mosquito nets? The family featured has two choices for their children: starving or malaria, and I would pick malaria every time too.
posted by viggorlijah at 3:56 PM on January 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

Because they're fishing illegally and the non-profit doesnt want to get banned from the country or fined for abetting crime?

This is a problem of poverty and local over population, the tragedy of the commons. The only solution is to raise the standard of living and educational levels.
posted by fshgrl at 4:02 PM on January 24, 2015

And stop using insecticides in areas like this. Nets still work without them.
posted by fshgrl at 4:07 PM on January 24, 2015

Nets without insecticide are much less effective at stopping malaria. On the other hand, they're also a lot less likely to pollute the whole world with poison, and mosquitoes in some places are already developing resistance to the insecticide they use.
posted by sfenders at 4:44 PM on January 24, 2015

That's not such a common disease though, it's hard to imagine what it would be like to be at risk of malaria every day.

I have had West Nile. In my case it was pretty similar to the flu except for the part where I was unconscious for 36 hours.
posted by localroger at 6:14 PM on January 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

Handing out mosquito nets to curb malaria is like handing out bullet-proof vests to curb school shootings.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 8:10 PM on January 24, 2015

That is a terrible analogy. In 2013, 584,000 people died of malaria. Around 200,000,000 people were infected. Even if it doesn't kill you, malaria is debilitating and painful and horrible. Taking precautionary risks against malaria isn't some foolish, laughable thing comparable to bullet-proof vests against an eventuality that will almost certainly never occur. Things like expanding ease of access to nets have had marked effects dropping malarial death rates, even if they are not perfect and certainly not one-stop solutions to this problem. Beating malaria is going to take a lot more investment, and willingness from development agencies and governments to acknowledge the nuance in local situations. Malaria will not be eradicated by insecticide-treated nets alone. But they are an important step.

My anecdotal malaria experience is that the one night I slept in a village without a mosquito net (out of eleven months in a malarial environment), I could tell. I woke up with more than 40 bites on my arms. And two weeks later when I got back to the US and finished my course of prophylactics, I came down with malaria. I was hospitalized for a week. I had a fever of 105.7 when I was admitted to the hospital. I had blood transfusions. I was really fucking sick. I got better; 584,000 people didn't.
posted by ChuraChura at 8:49 PM on January 24, 2015 [7 favorites]

It's a perfect analogy, for what an analogy is supposed to be -- a means of comparison, and not justification or rationalization, which you seem to think it must be.

Mosquitos are vectors of malaria. If you want to stop malaria, and you're lacking a vaccine, then the next most logical thing is to get rid of the vector.

DDT kills bugs dead. Environmental concerns? Sure. But let's stack up the environmental concerns against a pile of dead kids and see which one gets the most votes.

Or, you know. Nets. So you can hide.

Take the bullets out of the gun, or wear a bullet-proof vest. Which strategy seems more efficient?
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 9:17 PM on January 24, 2015

DDT kills bugs dead.

You'll be glad to know they are in fact spraying DDT all over the place as well. Not every type of malaria is the same, and in some places it probably does work better than nets, but not everywhere. It definitely takes the same place as the pyrethroid treated nets in your analogy.
posted by sfenders at 5:25 AM on January 25, 2015

DDT kills bugs dead

You've bought into a pretty persistant myth deliberately perpetrated against the environmental movement. This is a constant theme on the anti-green right, that bleeding heart liberals (see Rachel Carson and Silent Spring etc.) banned the use of DDT worldwide and thereby chose the health of a few Californian seabirds over the lives of millions of children.

The problem with this is it's complete BS. DDT continued to be used in Africa because, whaddayaknow, it turns out the US Congress can't pass laws controlling the use of pesticides in Africa! And it also turned out that DDT is not a magic bullet that solves the malaria problem overnight. Mosquitos become resistant to DDT. So wide-scale DDT spraying turns out to be ultimately pretty useless. It remains effective as a locally-applied deterrent (even resistant mossies don't like playing around in the stuff), but that's pretty much the same "bullet-proof-vest" strategy that nets are part of.

So, no. There isn't an easy, straightforward solution to the world's malaria crisis just sitting on the shelf not being used because Rachel Carson overreacted to a few sick birds.
posted by yoink at 7:26 AM on January 25, 2015 [4 favorites]

Ugandan innovators use smartphones to detect malaria
posted by infini at 6:40 AM on January 26, 2015