Soft Ticks, Bedbugs, and Sea Kayaking

Eight hundred and fifty miles by truck, an offshore island, and a cave in 24 hours. Back in my medical school/ Haight Asbury days this would have been a Hunter S. Thompson saga of blotter acid, methamphetamines, THC, and high-speed travel. But, I'm more mature now and as I have discovered, The Eddy Line is a family publication, so I am writing to chronicle a serious endeavor.

A bunch of the boys and I was talkin' about bats, ticks, rabies, Rocky Mountain spotted fever and other fun things the other day. Then, I remembered an article Will published last year on new ticks he had discovered in South Carolina (Reeves W, Durden L, Wills W. New records of ticks (Acari: Argasidae, Ixodidae) from South Carolina. J Agric Urban Entomol 2002;19:197-204). Then it all sort of fell into place and a visit to Devaux Island at the mouth of the North Edisto River near Charleston became imperative.

First some background for your general edification and to maintain Eddy Line continuing outdoor education requirements. Ticks transmit more varieties of pathogens than any other group of blood-feeding arthropods and are second only to mosquitoes in their importance as disease vectors. Pathogens (germs that make you sick) spread by ticks include viruses, rickettsia, protozoa, spirochetes, and bacteria. Arthropods include mosquitoes, biting flies, ticks, mites, fleas, and bedbugs. A vector is an arthropod (or any living carrier) that transports a pathogen from the sick to the well.

In South Carolina, ticks are important vectors of many diseases including Lyme disease, cat-scratch fever, and Rocky Mountain spotted fever. Soft ticks are especially bad. These aren't the ones you find latched onto your dog and from which the expression "tighter 'n a tick" was coined. No. Soft ticks find a victim (woops we epidemiologists call them hosts), feed for 20 minutes or so, and then drop off to molt, have sex, lay eggs, or just hang-out. Then when they are good and ready they prowl around (sometimes tens of thousands of them simultaneously) looking for the next meal. Unlike the usual tick you are used to, soft ticks live forever. One, at least, survived 25 years without feeding in a vial on Harry Hoagstral's desk.

Soft ticks are usually host-specific, that is they prefer to feed on one species. But they're like creekers, so if the usual host is not available anything will do. Also, unlike most vectors, virtually any virus, rickettsia, or bacteria will grow in ticks. In the old days, before overnight shipping and insulated containers, scientists used to ship infectious agents by injecting them into soft ticks, putting the ticks into a vial, and mailing them. When they arrived at their destination the recipient would grind-up the ticks and recover the virus or whatever.

So what does this all have to do with sea kayaking? Well, one of the reasons people sea kayak is to observe wildlife and sea birds generally get photographed a lot. Both brown pelicans and laughing gulls are quite common in the summer and many of them winter on the islands as well. More important, they migrate up and down the coast (pelicans from North Carolina to Venezuela and gulls

throughout the Caribbean). They're both pretty good sized, so lots of soft bird ticks can feed on them. Finally, both pelicans and gulls nest on the ground, so soft ticks can drop off and climb back on again cafeteria style when they get hungry. When Will surveyed Devaux Island last May, pelican and gull nests were literally crawling with soft ticks and he collected a new species previously not known to live in South Carolina. Good news, they could not isolate viruses from them, and even better, we found only one stinking tick during our visit to the Island in January.

You may still be asking what this all has to do with sea kayaking. Well, in addition to being aware of ticks when you're camping, you need to know about Devaux Island because it's a destination in its own right, if you just happen to be in the Charleston area. Devaux is about four miles down the North Edisto River from the boat ramp in Rockville, and is about midway between Hilton Head Island and Charleston.

The trip out is scenic but (as always) you should check tide tables. It's a young and dynamic island that I would classify between a typical barrier island and a large semipermanent sandbar, which extends above high tide.

Devaux is formed where the discharge of the Edisto River meets the sea. It has been there long enough to support some small trees on the tops of dunes. Fascinatingly, it's a bit like an atoll, in that there is a rather large lagoon that you can paddle into.

Overall the island is a couple of miles in diameter so it provides a lot to explore. We had no problem landing from the north, but there was considerable violent chop (similar to that around Tybee's triangle) to the west. The south (sea) exposure would have provided an "interesting, entertaining, carnage filled" landing.

In addition to pelicans and gulls, Devaux serves as a feeding and nesting area for dunlins, terns and skimmers. We also saw quite active osprey, anhinga and kestrel. The island is particularly vulnerable to intrusion during nesting season (March to July) so don't plan to visit then.

The area around Devaux is infested with dolphin. I have never seen so many, and 10 or so of them were feeding within 5' of the shore the entire time we were on the island. Overall, Devaux offers variety from the usual barrier islands and marshes that we all have visited, so it's well worth checking out.

Hmm. Where do the cave and bedbugs come in? Well no boating trip is complete unless you also get in some caving. So, on the way back to Clemson we stopped to collect bedbugs from bat guano in one the numerous inland reef caves in the area. That is of course a completely different story that I'll have to tell another time.

by William C. Reeves (The Hawk)
From The Eddy Line, March 2004

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