Spotted lanternflies are showing up on Jersey Shore beaches

VENTNOR, N.J. — The flick of the red-winged fly comes as a shock at first: What is that guy doing at the beach?

Scourge of the more lush mainlands, the spotted lanternfly has made its way down the Shore, droves of them in recent weeks, littering the sand with lanternfly carcasses, joining the local crowd of green heads and black flies. But why? What’s an invasive species that loves trees and vegetation doing in a sandy place like this?

Julie Urban, a Penn State associate researcher in entomology, said the lanternflies were most likely blown onto the beach with the stubborn westerly land breezes that have been plaguing beach-goers the last few weeks.

“I think this is the time of year in particular where they move to different trees, and they need to feed very heavily to reproduce,” said Urban, an evolutionary biologist who studies “plant-hoppers” such as spotted lanternflies. ”My sense is they’re flying and moving and it’s easy to get blown.”

Urban said the lanternflies likely will not fare well on the beach, which might explain why most of them were dead or dying in clusters along the tide line.

“They seem to be pretty heat sensitive,” she said. “If they’re exposed in the heat, that will stress them out.”

The ocean will likely drown them, as well, she said. “They’re pretty sensitive to temperature and airflow,” she said. “The water would kill them. And if exposed to sea water, the salt would desiccate them: dry them out.”

The good news: Unlike green heads and mosquitos and gnats, the spotted lanternfly won’t bite humans.

“They can’t penetrate human skin,” Urban said. ”It’s that nuisance factor. Especially on the beach, they’re big and flat so it seems kind of gross.”

The bad news: The same land breeze that brought the lanternflies also plagued late summer Shore goers with the kind of pests that do bite.

Jeff Wolfe, the public information officer with New Jersey’s Department of Agriculture, said the lanternflies were seen on some beaches last summer. “They could have laid their egg masses or hatched there,” he said.

This is the time when they grow to full size, and people start to notice them.

Wolfe had another theory about how they got to the beach.

“They’re outstanding hitchhikers,” he said. “They can pop on to any vehicle or truck or train, any type of transportation, and hang on to that for a long distance. That’s how they spread.

“With so much traffic, especially the last couple weeks before summer’s end, they could have latched on. They start showing up. They become adults in August.”

Although more noticeable than, say, the iconic Jersey fly, the no-see-um, they are less harmful.

“They don’t bite,” he reiterated. “They don’t hurt people or pets. But nobody wants to have a bug jump on you.”

He referred anyone with concerns to New Jersey’s website: www.badbug.nj.gov for more information about the pretty-yet-not-pretty red pest.

He said that, last summer, the lanternflies also seemed to congregate right by the tide’s edge.

The state is not asking people to report them anymore, as they have been found in all 21 counties. The state will come in and treat in high transportation areas, he said.

Urban said the move to the beach is not advantageous to the lanternfly. They are basically going there to die, then likely get washed away with the tide.

“They’re not going to last long at the beach,” she said.