Alberta - Silver Lining On A Midge Cloud
An often annoying bug that does a lot of underappreciated work.
EPISODE NOTES
After this episode had been posted and made the rounds, someone pointed out that they thought these were mayflies, not midges. That… if true, kind of ruins this whole episode. I’m trying to confirm if they are right or not and maybe just remove the episode if so. For now: you’ve been warned. The info is all correct per midges but… those might not be midges…
This is one of those episodes that wound up pan-provincial because of little pieces of old footage I pulled together to make it. The swarm itself is from Fish Creek Provincial Park, naturally. But the shoreline when talking about salt water midges is from Vancouver Island. The ‘waste and runoff’ clips are from the Rideau Canal in Ottawa. And the dead fish are from Bowmanville Creek.
TRANSCRIPT
On my second day in Calgary I was taking a stroll through Fish Creek Provincial Park at the south end of the city - which happens to be the 2nd largest urban park in Canada.
And I’m heading down to the creek itself and something catches my eye - the air seems to be sparkling in an area by some standing water. The light is hitting just right to catch thousands of tiny midges in flight.
And you know what, in the last video I tried to sway public opinion on the magpie so I figured, why not give myself a real challenge.
These guys are in the midst of an autumnal mating swarm. Twice a year, in the spring and the fall, as new generations of aquatic larva leave their waterways for the air, the males gather in frenzied clouds to attract females.
Or possibly they’re just sports fans - it’s been pointed out their swarms coincide pretty nicely with the NBA playoffs and the MLB playoffs.
Regardless - the swarm I ran into kept itself politely contained, but that’s not always the case. In years with the right conditions midge swarms can get out of control, millions of them over a massive area that can look like billowing smoke from a distance and from up close - well, it’s just all-around unpleasant. No wonder in certain places people can dread these times of year.
But annoying or not, you can’t argue with their success. Canada alone has 1,300 named species and it’s suspected there are at least that many we haven’t identified yet.
Among them are some of the very rare insects that can live in salt water - the larva of some midge species spend their lives thirty meters under the ocean.
The usual silver lining on a midge cloud is it points to a healthy waterway. It makes sense - a ton of larva means a robust ecosystem, and a lot of very happy fish - one fish can eat 1500 midge larva in a single morning.
But the truth might be more complicated - because of how resilient midges are. They can actually thrive on some of the waste and runoff that poisons other species. And if that includes fish, naturally you’ll get more midges.
So, does a big swarm actually suggest an unbalanced ecosystem? Not necessarily. In 2016, researchers in Berlin discovered midge larva have a huge effect on lake bottoms - their activity can increase oxygenation in sediments by 300%, promoting aerobic breakdown. And that leads to way more nutrients available to the whole food web.
Turns out midges aren’t just a sign of a healthy waterway, the can actually drive that health from the literal bottom up.
So… I hope the next time one of them goes in your mouth… in some small way, this helps.