Despite Sandy, Sea Nettles Return to Barnegat Bay

If there was any hope that Superstorm Sandy washed away Barnegat Bay's stinging sea nettles, it was lost over the past few weeks.

The translucent jellyfish, packing an annoying sting, have returned to the bay with a vengeance as the peak of their season – late July into August – has arrived.

Dr. Paul Bologna, a professor at Montclair State University, is currently studying the bay's jellyfish with a group of students. Last week, his team found sea nettles with tentacles more than six feet long, he said at a recent meeting of Save Barnegat Bay. His research so far shows there's just no way to avoid them, for the most part.

"They're in upwards of 90 percent the bay's water, so they can just explode [in population] really fast," he said.

Traditionally, the northern half of Barnegat Bay – especially the waters around Brick, Toms River and Lavallette, where there is flow from the Metedeconk and Toms rivers – get the worst of the nettles, but this year some reports are saying they have shifted a bit to the south.

Mike Kennish, a research professor at Rutgers University, said in a university publication this week that 2013's sea nettle population is bucking the trend of the past 13 years.

"There are higher numbers reported in the Forked River area and farther south than in the northern part of the bay, which is very unusual," he said.

Kennish's theory is that a rainy June flushed fresh water out from the rivers, lowering salinity and pushing the sea nettles further south. So the population may reappear in the northern bay as salinity returns.

The prospect of Superstorm Sandy affecting the sea nettle population seems not to have panned out in the short term, experts say, though it's still too early to tell. There is always the chance that there could be long-term ramifications.

"The bay circulation has changed post-Sandy, and we're still trying to understand what's going on," said Bologna.

Researchers have long held that sea nettle blooms have increased due to a combination of increased fertilizer usage, the closed-in nature of the waterway as well as rising temperatures due to global climate change.

But the reason the sea nettles – which have been identified in the bay since the early 1900s – have stuck around in recent years is likely because vinyl bulkheading has replaced treated lumber over the past two decades. The treated lumber, though harsher on the environment as a whole, kept the nettles from overwintering. The non-treated vinyl provides their polyps a place to stay during the cold months.

"I don't think we're ever going to get away from them, but the question is how do you minimize their potential?" said Bologna.