Tiny creatures with a big sting are turning up in larger numbers at the Jersey Shore.
They're called clinging jellyfish, small in size but have a painful sting so potent it could require a trip to the hospital.
These creatures have turned up mostly in back bays from Monmouth County all the way to Cape May, typically in shallow water with algae. Finding them in the ocean is highly unlikely.
Director of Marine Biology and Coastal Sciences at Montclair State University Dr. Paul Bologna has been studying the invasive clinging jellyfish since experts first confirmed their presence in New Jersey eight years ago.
Get top local stories in Philly delivered to you every morning. Sign up for NBC Philadelphia's News Headlines newsletter.
Bologna even takes his students on the water with him so they too can learn and understand the jellyfish.
“Consistently over time we are seeing them and that means that there's enough of them here that the population is stable, which also means that it's potentially growing,” Bologna said.
Earlier this year, a discovery near a beach in Brick Township caught researchers off guard. They found clinging jellyfish about 3 miles upriver from where the Metedeconk meets Barnegat Bay.
"We’ve never had them that far up river," Bologna said. "It was really low salinity. We really were not expecting them. So that means that their ability to survive in our estuaries is really high.”
Their numbers usually start to go down when the water warms up, often around the 4th of July.
Caution remains key for these small jellies with a big sting.
Sign up for our Breaking newsletter to get the most urgent news stories in your inbox.
