(Above: Plumes of pollution like the one seen above have many causes, but one is the turbulence kicked up by jet-skiers who churn up shallow waters.)

As you read this, I will be preparing for a neighborhood party at which the locals will be celebrating the departure of those summer visitors known as "bennies."

Most bennies are fairly well-behaved during the 10 weeks they're at the Shore. But some aren't. Among the worst-behaved are the owners of those torture devices known as Personal Watercraft.

My friend Brian grew up boating in the Normandy Beach area before becoming a baker, and eventually the owner of a bakery or two. If you think working in a kitchen full of hot ovens in the summer is fun, I can assure you based on my visits to the bakery that it is not.

But over a couple of decades of baking, Brian managed to accumulate enough money to build his dream house on the bay. He was looking forward to moving in this summer, but he soon found those bennies on PWCs turned his dream into a nightmare every weekend.

The PWCs, commonly known as jet skis, have a lot in common with those flies that come off the bay in summer. They make a buzzing sound that only seems to get louder by the minute.

This would be fine if they stuck to the deep water in the middle of the bay. But they like to buzz around the sedge islands that sit a bit offshore Brian's house for some reason.

Brian said he suspects he knows the reason: They're morons.

"After going around the island a few times, I don't understand why they go around and around all day," he said.

Neither do I. There are basically two things you can do on a jet ski: Go really fast in a straight line. Or go slow and do donuts. Brian recalled renting one when they first came out a couple decades ago. Basically you've had all the fun you're ever going to have after the first hour, he said. After that it's just repetition.

The locals quickly got bored with it, but every summer there's a new crop of bennies who find it fascinating for a few weekends.

Like most locals, Brian prefers boating. We jumped in his and went to get a closer look.

State law requires jet skiers to slow down to minimum speed within 100 feet of shore. But when we got out on the water we saw packs of jet-skiers doing their best to get as close as possible to the shoreline, often at speeds in excess of 50 mph. This causes erosion and destroys marine life.

"There's blatant ignorance that they're running over live marsh," he said "They're like freaking motorcycle gangs out there."

That's totally unfair - to the motorcycle gangs. If a bunch of bikers spent the afternoon doing donuts on the street outside your house, you could call the cops and have them chased away.

But when Brian calls the cops on the jet-skiers, he rarely gets a response.

"They did show up once. I don't know if it was because I called," he said. "But all they did was check credentials. At the same time, the guys were cutting right through the marsh."

"My main concern is not credentials," he said. "My main concern is that they're not supposed to be in the area."

I later ran that by Michael J. Kennish, a research professor in Marine Sciences at Rutgers. He told me that the shallow areas of the bay off the sedge islands are a prime breeding grounds for both birds and marine life.

"They're not supposed to operate them in less than two feet of water but you see them riding up on the sea grass," he said "Sea grass is essential habitat for bay biotic communities."

Kennish said the sediment they stir up makes the water so opaque that light can't get through to the sea grass and the populations of clams and crabs that breed in it, he said. Meanwhile the noise scares off sea birds, who will abandon their nests with eggs in them, he said.

There's a simple solution to this. The state Marine Police should enforce the law concerning the operation of PWCs. If that turns out to be impossible - which I suspect it might be - then PWCs should be banned from the bay on the perfectly logical grounds that the operators won't obey the law of their own free will.

No one would miss them, except for the bennies.

And as Brian told me as we looked out on the raucous scene below his back deck, they'll be gone as of the first Monday in September.

That's called Labor Day elsewhere.

But at the Shore it's just called the best day of the year.

COMMENTS - NO FAKE LIBERTARIANISM PLEASE: Every time I write about some sort of bad behavior that the unrefined classes inflict on their betters, I hear from someone who argues people are free to do as they please under the concept of liberty.

True enough. But if people are free to do as they please, then a homeowner should also be allowed to take out a flare gun - or perhaps a real gun - and fire a couple of warning shots at the people sending their obnoxious noises to his property.

We have laws to prevent both sorts of behavior.

Only one side of the law is being enforced unfortunately - or fortunately for the bennies. I know quite a few boaters and homeowners who have dreams of abating that nuisance with extreme prejudice.

Anyway, that's liberty. This is just cretinous behavior.