When those extra-high tides occur, billions of eggs are washed into marshes, where they hatch within a few hours. For the first four or five days, the mosquito is a tiny aquatic maggot, swimming to the marsh's bottom to feed and returning to the surface to breathe through a snorkel-like tube. . Then, like a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, the mosquito grows a shrimp-shaped cocoon, growing wings and other adult features over two days. About a week after the moon tide, the mosquito is mature. It inflates itself with air to pop its cocoon, taking to the sky with billions of other newborns, said Wayne Crans, director of the mosquito research program at Rutgers University's Cook College. .
Mosquitoes are more than a barbecue nuisance.
They are an excellent transmitter of disease. Mosquitoes transmit disease when they draw blood from one diseased animal, lay their eggs, and feed on a second host. While males feed only on nectar, females require a blood meal to breed. The last major, local outbreak of mosquito-borne illness was in 1959, when 21 people died along the southern New Jersey coast from eastern equine encephalitis, said Bill Reinert, director of the Atlantic County Mosquito Control Unit. . Efforts to minimize the 12 to 14 mosquito broods that annually fill the area include pesticide spraying and flooding of muddy breeding grounds to create permanently wet saltmarsh.