They’re cute and cuddly and have that canine sense of smell that can actually help keep our water clean. A new program in the Barnegat Bay is putting pups to work, training them to detect human pollution in our waterways. The waste can come from failing infrastructure or from stormwater run-off. Either way, human pathogens can cause major problems in our ecosystem, creating threats to public health and even closures of public beaches.
One scent-trained dog recently was in six different Ocean County towns over the course of five days to sniff out pollution.
