IRNP recommends filtering AND chemical treatment?!

Questions about equipment and supplies to bring on a trip (including reviews).

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Midwest Ed
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Re: IRNP recommends filtering AND chemical treatment?!

Post by Midwest Ed »

CHUCKX53 wrote:
Keweenaw wrote:
Years ago I remember a ranger saying that he just drank the water out of Superior directly, but recommended filtering.

Bob
Like I said, not something I would ever recommend.....
There can of course be so many nasty things in water to make you sick. . . and the Lake Superior water looks so pure and clean and so inviting on a hot parching day.

Some things can make you sick fairly quickly, others take awhile and yet some take a long, long while.

Isle Royale is blessed with a long standing ecosystem that includes among other things, a special symbiotic relationship triangle involving the moose, the wolf and the tapeworm.

The tapeworm lives as the classically characterized adult parasite in the wolf’s intestines. In the wolf scat there are tapeworm eggs. These exist and live for a long time on foliage and in the water run off. The moose then ingests these eggs where they are then transported through the bloodstream only to become lodged in the capillaries. This is most commonly the lungs but can be most anywhere. It then begins to multiply eventually forming a cyst. The moose is then killed and eaten (along with one or more cysts) by the wolf thus completing the symbiotic cycle.

Unfortunately if you happen to drink some tapeworm egg contaminated water that has not been boiled or filtered properly, you are going to be a stand in actor for the moose not the wolf. You could remain without symptoms for several years only to one day succumb to a cyst in your lung or brain.

What are the odds? I’ve never seen anyone willing to wager. But I have read reports of people that drank directly and then days later exclaimed they were “lucky” since they did not become sick. Maybe not so lucky.

By the way, happy lighthouse hunting. Is there anywhere that your works are displayed?

~Ed
Last edited by Midwest Ed on Tue Aug 31, 2010 11:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
8 trips, 1975 x 2, 1976 x 2, 1978, 1985, 2000, 2013
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CHUCKX53
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Re: IRNP recommends filtering AND chemical treatment?!

Post by CHUCKX53 »

Well, Ed, I will make sure I don't sip on any unfiltered/unboiled Isle Royale water for sure ! Thanks for the heads-up about the tapeworms. Is this just a product of Wolf excretment or other animals as well ?

As to the Lighthouse photos......

For many years, we were selling some of the best photos, framed and matted, and shipping them. We didn't post them anywhere up until last year, when I began posting a few of them on Lighthousing.net, a site of which I'm a regular poster. It's a phpBB, just like this one, easy to access and use....In fact, this site sorta feels like home because of the similarities.
Since my threads are somewhat scattered throughout the Great Lakes Lighthouses section, I'll provide links to the ones where I've posted the most photos......

http://www.lighthousing.net/forums/view ... =5&t=10281
http://www.lighthousing.net/forums/view ... f=5&t=9694
http://www.lighthousing.net/forums/view ... f=5&t=9448
http://www.lighthousing.net/forums/view ... f=5&t=9443
http://www.lighthousing.net/forums/view ... f=5&t=9829

These are but a tiny fraction of the over 11,000 photos I've shot of the Great Lakes Lights.
LIVE LONG AND PROSPER
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Midwest Ed
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Re: IRNP recommends filtering AND chemical treatment?!

Post by Midwest Ed »

CHUCKX53 wrote:Is this just a product of Wolf excrement or other animals as well ?
There are several species of tapeworm and they have different life cycles, some of which differ significantly from the Isle Royale one. It is call the Hydatid Tapeworm or Echinococcus granulosus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echinococcus_granulosus

I think it would need to a predator carnivore if not a wolf. I would think a fox would be included as well. The common dog is the most common carrier of this tapeworm. The wolf and the fox are the only carnivores on the island. I don't know if other mammals such as beaver are vulnerable to this parasite in the same way as moose and humans.

About lighthouses, so it's called lighthousing? That's quite a collection you've achieved.
8 trips, 1975 x 2, 1976 x 2, 1978, 1985, 2000, 2013
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