I grew up reading books where kids jumped in lakes and rivers to swim. I also grew up in Louisiana with a bayou just beyond my back yard.
I grew up with my parents constantly telling me not to jump in the bayou behind our house to swim, because it was full of venomous snakes.
(It doesn’t count as jumping in to swim if you are trying to walk on perilously slippery logs and fall in on accident, right? Not that such a thing ever happened to me, heh heh…)
Regardless, I love swimming. Manmade swimming pools are great and all, but so limiting! Up here in the barren far north, most of my swimming has to be indoors (since winter lasts approximately 873258 months of the year, and even in summer, the outdoor water temperature seems to top out at around 70). I miss how *big* outdoor bodies of water are, and swimming in sunlight (or at night, with the moon and cool nature noises).
(Since I’m allergic to most plants that exist, I prefer my nature to be… aquatic in nature. Lol nature in nature.)
With bayous ruled out as childhood swimming spots, oceans were my usual go-to. I loved swimming out as far as I could before the lifeguards started getting testy with me. Every now and then I’d have a friend who would get freaked out about how far I’d go. Usually, they wouldn’t worry about riptides and actual threats, though. They’d be concerned about sharks.
(That’s just silly. Sharks are adorable, curious not malicious, and as trainable as puppies.)
(…though if those same people ever saw an overhead shot of the beach, and just how close so many sharks were…)
Anyway! Back to the point. In between complaining about how cold the outdoor waters are up here in The Land of Malignant Winters, I decided to look up the water temps of places of my youth.
Um… Uh… Rut-roh.
The Florida beaches of my youth this summer are in hot water. Literally, like, 100 degrees hot water. I mean, I love hot tubs *more* than most people, but the newly consistent heat gives me a bacterial concern: Vibrio vulnificus.
Doesn’t “vulnificus” just *sound* like a villain name? Anyway, this unpleasant critter is better known under its street name: Flesh-eating Bacteria.
[Note that flesh-eating bacteria is a Dread Pirate Roberts kind of shared pseudonym. Lots of different types of bacteria can cause necrotizing infections, from MRSA (drug resistant staph infections) to streptococcal friends (think strep throat) and more!]
Vibrio vulnificus likes warm saltwater environments, and loves breaks in your skin. What does it do once it finds a break in your skin? Well, amputations are a common treatment; 20% of the infected will die; and many uninfected will make the poor life choice of doing a google image search on what the infection looks like.
(Seriously. Don’t look.)
So, yes, this bacteria thrives in warm saltwater. Increased weather temperatures give us warmer water for longer periods of time, giving us more of the bacteria, and helps them creep into new territories! Such fun!
Okay, so maybe saltwater is dangerous. But if we stick to freshwater lakes and ponds and stuff, we should be safe, right?
WRONG.
Turns out that getting water up your nose in a lake can LITERALLY KILL YOU. Naegleria fowleri, the brain-eating amoeba, lurks in fresh water. It’s rare, but increasing—and the amoebas range is increasing. Like our villainous vulnificus buddy, they thrive in warm waters and—again—as the weather trends get warmer, so do the waters, allowing them to live farther and farther north.
And, worse than the 1-in-5 chance of dying that the ocean-born flesh eating bacterial gives you, these foul fowleri’s infections are almost always fatal.
Will this information keep me on dry land or saturated in chlorine?
HAH. Even if I wanted to, I lack the restraint to stay away. I love the water far too much.
(And I even love the sharks and the snakes. If I ever get bitten by either, I’ll hold myself responsible over them.)
(I won’t extend that grace to amoebas or bacteria though. A girl’s got to have SOME standards.)
