Russ Zimmer

@RussZimmer

Who's a good boy? Who's a good girl? Sable and Remi, that's who.

These two specially trained dogs are part of an effort to sniff out and identify the sources of human waste that have been leeching into the Navesink River, threatening the health of the ecosystem and the shellfishing industry in Monmouth County.

Water-quality advocates Clean Ocean Action published a report earlier this summer proclaiming that fecal coliforms — a bacteria found in the intestines of warm-blooded animals that can be a harbinger of dangerous pathogens — represented a serious threat to the river's future as a natural treasure as well as a place of business and play.

Last month, researchers from Clean Ocean Action, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and Rutgers announced together that they had each independently determined that human waste is contributing to the high levels of contamination in the river.

Watch the video above to see the dogs in action

Handlers Scott and Karen Reynolds, of Environmental Canine Services based in Maine, have been taking Sable and Remi all around the Navesink River this week. Using their powerful sense of smell, these dogs can detect trace amounts of human fecal matter in bodies of water.

Zach Lees, an attorney with Clean Ocean Action, said they haven't found "a smoking gun" but that the dogs have been able to narrow down the areas of interest, both by alerting on traces of human waste in spots and staying silent in others that can now be crossed off the list of suspects.

EARLIER: Yes, that is human poop in the Navesink

In addition to being unseemly, fecal coliforms, especially those generated alongside human waste, are a bright red flag that water quality is suffering. Accidentally swallowing water that is high in this type of bacteria can cause gastrointestinal illnesses as well as respiratory, skin, eye, ear, nose and throat diseases.

An analysis of EPA data by the Asbury Park Press found that 1 in 11 water quality samples taken from the Navesink from 2011 through 2015 exceeded safe-swimming levels of fecal coliform. The dirtiest spots were clustered around the Route 35 bridge that connects Red Bank and Middletown where more than 20 percent of samples were dirty.

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Lees said that investigators will be circling back to certain areas — for instance, Mechanic Street in Red Bank — to do additional sampling after the dogs' work is done.

Sable, 10, was the very first dog in the world to be trained in this way.

A rescue dog, Sable was in terrible shape when he was originally taken in by a shelter, but he had the sort of single-minded focus that Scott Reynolds said he was looking for when he was looking for a "pilot dog" to train for this skill.

"I went on petfinder.com and the shelter had a video of him in front of a pond and the lady from the shelter had a tennis ball in her hand and all these other dogs were running around and (Sable) wasn't paying any attention to any of them except for that tennis ball, and when she threw it he went and did a big belly flop into the pond after that ball and brought it right back to her," he recalled. "I said I want to see that dog."

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