Russ Zimmer

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UPDATE: During a community meeting on Thursday night, jellyfish expert Paul Bologna reiterated the findings he shared with the Asbury Park Press in the story below and also shared something about the Shrewsbury River's mini-menace that might kind of blow your mind. Watch the short video above for the scoop.

Clinging jellyfish, the tiny invertebrate with nasty venom, first appeared in New Jersey a month ago

Their presence has been confirmed in the Shrewsbury and Manasquan rivers and near the mouth of the Navesink River

Scientists from the state and Montclair State University are in the middle of a 30-day study of the invasive species

The lead researcher believes the clinging jellyfish population has peaked for the year

Sometimes the enemy of your enemy is your friend.

Researchers studying the clinging jellyfish invasion have determined that sea nettles — a relatively new nuisance themselves — feed on the dime-sized, X-marked invertebrate.

It has been so difficult to locate clinging jellyfish — perhaps because they are being picked off by their larger cousin — that Paul Bologna, a jellyfish expert from Montclair State University, thinks the worst might be over for 2016.

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"The numbers are dropping off the map," he told the Asbury Park Press. "We found two last week and we think we may have found one Wednesday night when we’re doing some night sampling. ... My expectation is that we won't see clinging jellyfish in big numbers until next year."

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Here's an interactive map from the state showing where they have searched for or found the clinging jellyfish:

Bologna made the discovery after he introduced the creatures to each other in a tank in his laboratory. The marine biologist said that he was more or less throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what would stick.

“It took about 10 or 12 minutes and then the sea nettle got a hold of it, once it got it in its feeding tentacles …then it was probably another 5 minutes before (the clinging jellyfish) was in its gut," he said. "The clinging jellyfish was desperate to get away, it just couldn’t.”

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They've replicated the experiment a few more times and are confident that the sea nettle, which are responsible for their share of wasp-like stings, preys on the smaller jellyfish.

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But it's not all good news.

"We got this massive explosion of sea nettles (throughout the Shrewsbury River)," he said. "It's way worse than even some of the worst years I saw in the Barnegat Bay."

Nitrogen pollution from stormwater runoff has been blamed for the inundation of sea nettles in the Barnegat Bay starting in about 2010.

Bologna has been studying sea nettles in the Barnegat Bay, as seen here:

While trawling for the clinging jellyfish, Bologna said his team and researchers from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection were finding sea nettles in high densities in the Shrewsbury, sometimes as high as five specimens per cubic meter.

That's as high as anything they observed in the Barnegat Bay and probably higher because they were only counting sea nettles that they could detect with the naked eye, unlike in the bay where water samples were put under a microscope.

Clinging jellies have been in the spotlight since a 20-year-old man was stung in the Shrewsbury River near Oceanport. The symptoms became so severe that the otherwise healthy man, who remains the only confirmed clinging jellyfish victim in New Jersey, was hospitalized for three days and required morphine to dull the pain.

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Since then, a team of researchers from the state and Montclair State have been trawling various points in the rivers and Barnegat Bay.

The Shrewsbury continues to prove the most infested waterway. Clinging jellyfish have been found as far west as the bridge that links Oceanport and Little Silver.

Other than New Jersey's first case on June 9, no clinging jellies have been observed in the Manasquan River. Location efforts in Barnegat Bay have not turned up a single specimen.

The Navesink River is not part of the initial study. Bologna previously conceded that these creatures probably exist in the Navesink, but the 30-day investigation was focused on areas where the clinging jellies had been seen.

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Russ Zimmer: 732-557-5748, razimmer@app.com