WEST LONG BRANCH — Student and faculty researchers at Monmouth University have recorded the first confirmation of the anemone species Actinia equina, also known as the beadlet anemone, on North American shores.
According to a news release from the university, Actinia equina is a common inhabitant of the rocky coastlines of the British Isles and Northern Europe.
The Mid-Atlantic doesn’t have the ecosystems the anemone prefers, but they’ve made their homes in the man-made jetties that protrude off the shore. The shelter and food the jetties provide allow the non-native species to thrive in this new location.
The team located the anemones on a half-dozen beaches from Long Branch to Manasquan in Monmouth County.
“I found it for the first time in the fall of 2023, but Dr. Adolf had seen it before. We were going out for class and learning about the jetties, and I was trying to identify everything I saw. I couldn’t find anything on this weird-looking blobby thing,” said Diederik Boonman Morales, a senior marine and environmental biology and policy student at Monmouth University, according to the release. “I ended up finding Actinia equina and then I went back to Dr. Adolf and we started approaching anemone scientists in England where it’s native to.”
Jason Adolf, professor of marine science, came across the anemone years prior but couldn’t identify the species. He’d been sharing his findings with his classes, and Boonman Morales was the first student to identify the species.
Boonman Morales first encountered the anemones while cataloging marine life in the intertidal zone at a beach near campus as part of a homework assignment.
Neither he nor Adolf recognized what they were seeing, and could not find any information from existing literature and databases.
Around that time, a few other local beachgoers had posted pictures of similar specimens on a crowdsourcing website where nature enthusiasts and scientists share information about wildlife and plants they’ve encountered. None was sure what they had found.
Without existing research and studies, it’s hard to predict how this invasive species will affect native organisms. Boonman Morales said the anemone was first observed in New Jersey in 2021 but there hasn’t been any major evidence proving that it’s displacing other native organisms.
“It’s invading a human-made structure that’s not a part of the sandy environment,” Adolf said, referring to the jetties. “It’s probably not the most threatening of invasive species, but ecosystems are very complex and it’s hard to predict what an introduction of an invasive species might mean over time. We’re just starting to understand what that might mean.”
So far, there isn’t much evidence to prove the anemone has spread to southern New Jersey beaches.
“I went out to do a survey up north from Long Branch to Sandy Hook and we couldn’t find any,” Boonman Morales told the Star and Wave. “But there was an observation on iNaturalist that there was recently one in Long Island, so we know it crossed to that side. Someone found it in Island Beach State Park, but that’s as far south as I’m aware.”
An invasive species is a non-native organism that disrupts native organism’s ecosystems. The Actinia equina is from England and not native to the Atlantic shores. After identifying the anemone, the next step in their research is to observe how the anemone affects other species in the area.
“It definitely does disrupt the distribution,” Adolf told the paper. “Otherwise there would be mussels on the wet parts of the rocks, but instead there’s the clusters of anemone. Ecologically, from a marine biology perspective, it’s interesting because this is what we study in terms of who gets the space. When a new species comes in and displaces something that would normally be there, it’s an opportunity to study community dynamics.”
Adolf and Boonman Morales’ current focus is on the species’ distribution on the Jersey shore.
“We haven’t had a chance to survey the beaches in the south,” Adolf said. “What we really hope that comes out of this media is getting people to go out and take a picture and post to iNaturalist or send it to us.”
Adolf said relying on the community to find and talk about the species is the best way to identify where else the anemone is living.
Researchers can establish where the anemone is if residents observe their beaches and document anything that might look like the anemone. That would help create a map of the species’ distribution.
Although the species can be a variety of colors, the ones found in New Jersey have a blue ring at the bottom, pale green bodies and matching green tentacles with blue tips. They are known as aggressive predators because their tentacles produce a toxin to stun prey. Their tentacles don’t pose a serious threat to humans and cannot penetrate the skin, Boonman Morales said. They also tend to live in areas that most beachgoers don’t go near like the crevices between the rocks.
The researchers believe the anemones most likely arrived as hitchhikers aboard an international ship traveling to the Port of New York/New Jersey. They release clones into the water that can float and survive extreme conditions until they find a surface to cling to, Boonman Morales said.
The juvenile organisms may have been discharged in a ship’s ballast water or from an anemone living on a hull and carried by the currents from the New York Harbor area to northern Monmouth County.
Boonman Morales and Adolf are working on a GIS map showing the locations of sightings in the area in an effort to track their spread. Anyone who sees one is asked to email [email protected] with the date and location of the observation.
A study by the group, “First record of the sea anemone Actinia equina (Cnidaria: Anthozoa) on the Mid-Atlantic coast of the United States,” was published last month in the Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom.
By JULIA DiGERONIMO/For the Star and Wave