On an ordinary day, beachcombers roaming the rocky shores of Newfoundland can hope to find treasures like mermaid’s purses, barnacle shells, and a rainbow’s worth of sea-polished glass fragments. The oddest thing might be the occasional moose tooth, tools, or even a doll’s head. Now, mystery blobs of white unidentified matter are washing up on shore. The Canadian Coast Guard was notified, and beaches on the southern shores of the North Atlantic isle were briefly roped off while a federal agency began investigating. The blobs range in size from that of a coin to the size of a dinner plate. They come in an almost pristine white before mixing with sand and turning darker. They’re sticky, and some say the blobs carry a whiff of odor similar to paint. Beachcomber Philip Grace and his wife even tried to pry one apart. “It had a texture similar to not-fully-cooked dough,” said Philip. More precisely, he said, it resembled dough used for a Newfoundland fried bread dish called touton. He took to social media for help, where people suggested a wide range of possible culprits, from the industrial to the biological. Environment and Climate Change Canada sent environmental officers and scientists to collect samples, and several aerial, underwater and manual surveys of the beaches and shorelines have been conducted. Mystery still reigns, as neither the substance nor its source has been identified. Until more is known, scientists warn that beachgoers should be careful.
