The nettle population has exploded in Barnegat Bay in the last decade, for reasons biologists have yet to identify.
"People who have lived on the bay for years say they couldn't even go swimming at all this summer," said Paul Bologna, a marine biologist and Montclair's director of aquatic and coastal sciences.
Two years ago, Bologna began to collaborate with Jack Gaynor, a Montclair professor of molecular biology, to better understand nettles.
Around the environmentally stressed bay, where state legislation has been enacted to reduce the level of oxygen-sucking nitrogen from lawn fertilizer run-off, theories about the boom abound. Overdevelopment, warmer water, a decreased number of natural predators, changes in salinity, and the use of floating docks and pilings made of plastic are among the possibilities.
The deficit of data about the nettles has spawned recent interest by scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Smithsonian Institution, and schools throughout New Jersey.
But the most hands-on study may be the one conducted by Bologna and Gaynor. With little funding and the help of a handful of grad students and high schoolers, the pair have collected data weekly from several bay locations this summer.
Using nets, the team members take a sample from the brackish waters near the Metedeconk River and Silver Bay off Cattus Island County Park, and catalog the nettles' number and size, the water conditions, and other species found. The information will help establish a database for tracking populations and conditions in the Shore's largest estuary.
There were so many luminous floaters at the height of the invasion that at times the water looked like a polka-dotted carpet, Bologna said.
