'Stop The Sting' Campaign Aims To Reduce Jellyfish In Berkeley

BERKELEY, NJ — Volunteers from the Berkeley Township Underwater Search & Rescue Squad have been working to reduce the number of jellyfish in the Berkeley Shores area.

Over the past two weeks, divers have scrubbed the lagoon's bulkheads and floating docks to remove jellyfish eggs. As many as 100,000 jellyfish polyps can settle on one floating dock, and each polyp produces multiple bay nettle jellyfish every spring season

The squad’s bulkhead scrubbing is part of Save Barnegat Bay's "Stop the Sting" campaign. Through a partially funded New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) grant, Save Barnegat Bay is working in three lagoon communities to study experimental population reduction methods to find the best control procedures.

“In the first iteration of scrubbing in 2016, we literally used brushes,” said BTUSRS president Carl Mattocks. “Since we demonstrated that was possible, people continued to say that’s something that should be done.”

For this latest project, the squad refined their scrubbing methods by using a powerful pressure washer, which measures about 1,000 PSI — nearly double the strength of typical pressure washers.

“We tested those on holes of our boats that had barnacles on them and we were happy to note that they came off,” he said. “If we could get barnacles off boats, we thought we could get polyps which are basically just micro jellyfish eggs.”

The squad also employed their “Mud Bug,” an inshore diving workboat built to house powerful scrubbers, digital recording tools and all the safety features required when working in turbid and potentially hazardous waters.

Studies will be conducted over the next few years to determine if scrubbing these surfaces leads to a reduction of jellyfish in Berkeley Shores.

Anyone in the Berkeley Shores area interested in participating in the study and having their bulkheads scrubbed can contact Brittany McLaughlin, Save Barnegat Bay’s jellyfish education coordinator, at jellyfish@savebarnegatbay.org.

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