{"id":32300,"date":"2025-07-29T17:22:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T17:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/32300\/"},"modified":"2025-07-29T17:22:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T17:22:07","slug":"weird-worms-pop-up-at-jersey-shore-heres-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/32300\/","title":{"rendered":"Weird Worms Pop Up At Jersey Shore: Here&#8217;s Why"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>WILDWOOD, NJ \u2014 All sorts of creatures can be found along the shore. This past weekend, beachgoers reported sightings of dozens of strange, bristly worms. They went to social media, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/groups\/132980283957410\/posts\/1788978705024218\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">sharing photos and asking<\/a>: what are these worms?<\/p>\n<p>These eely, reddish worms are likely clam worms, a marine science expert <a href=\"https:\/\/6abc.com\/post\/worms-wildwood-new-jersey-heres-what-expert-says\/17339597\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">told Action News<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Clam worms, also known as cinder worms or pile worms, are related to earthworms. And despite their appearance, they&#8217;re harmless &#8211; just maybe a little gross for children having fun at the beach.<\/p>\n<p>As for why there were so many, that&#8217;s because it was time for these worms to breed. During their mating period, they come to the surface, according to <a href=\"https:\/\/invasions.si.edu\/nemesis\/species_summary\/-48\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the Smithsonian Institute<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The worms have a particular behavior of swimming around when they breed, Christine Thompson, an associate professor of marine science from Stockton University told Action News.<\/p>\n<p>But their breeding periods are short and the worms often die afterwards, according to Action News, so by Monday, the worms were gone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WILDWOOD, NJ \u2014 All sorts of creatures can be found along the shore. This past weekend, beachgoers reported&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32301,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":{"0":"post-32300","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}