Scientists are Stumped by White Blobs Washing Up on Canada's Coast

There are hundreds of them along miles of Newfoundland's beachers, and no one knows what they are

Hiya!

We search the skies for signs of alien life, but there is a wholly alien world right here on Earth — the Global Ocean, which takes up about 71 percent of the planet’s surface. While we play in the Ocean’s waters and transport across them in ships, sometimes we’re reminded of what a strange and unknown place it is.

These reminders often happen when the Ocean World regurgitates mysterious or bizarre creatures or objects that wash up on the beaches of our Land World. Such an event occurred recently along the Atlantic coastline of a Canadian province when residents found mysterious white blobs littered along its shores. These blobs are so weird that scientists know more about what they aren’t than what they are.

The Discovery

The mysterious blobs were first noticed in September 2024 by beachgoers on the shores of Canada’s northeast province, Newfoundland and Labrador. However, word really spread when a local named Philip Grace uploaded an image of the gooey, white lumps to a 40,000-member Beachcombers of Newfoundland and Labrador Facebook group, which is devoted to searching for sea glass, and asked:

"Anyone know what these blobs are. They are like toutons dough [a traditional fried-dough Newfoundland breakfast food] and all over the beach. These were in sizes ranging from dinner plate size right down to a toonie [Canadian 2-dollar coin]."

The image Philip Grace posted to the Facebook group

It wasn’t long after Grace’s post that the blobs appeared in the news. Another resident of Newfoundland and Labrador, Dave McGrath, told Leyland Cecco of The Guardian that he was walking on the beach of Patrick’s Cove when he spotted “hundreds, just hundreds of them” scattered on the shore. He said,

“They looked just like a pancake before you flip it over, when it has those dimpled little bubbles. I poked a couple with a stick and they were spongy and firm inside. I’ve lived here for 67 years and I’ve never seen anything like this, never.

“They sent the Coast Guard over and I asked them how bad it was. They told me they had 46km [28 miles] of coastline littered with this stuff and had no idea what it was.”

The coastguard also couldn’t determine whether the strange blobs were toxic or not. So what are they? If the coastguard doesn’t know, what about scientists?

What Are They?

The government agency responsible for investigating the blobs is Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), which visited the sites at least three times to collect samples and evaluate the situation.

Samantha Bayard, a spokesperson for the ECCC, told Ahmad Mukhtar of CBS News in Toronto that the agency was informed on September 07, 2024, about the blobs and referred to them as a “mystery substance,” and said,

"To date, ECCC has conducted several aerial, underwater and manual surveys of the beaches and shorelines in the area to determine the extent of the substance, what it is and its potential source. At this time, neither the substance nor its source has been identified."

Unsurprisingly, there are many possibilities, and even more ideas have been floated since the word got out about these blobs. However, most fall into one of two categories — biological or human-made.

Biological Matter?

Some online spectators wondered if the squishy masses might be part of a whale, perhaps whale vomit, sperm, boogers, or even ambergris, a byproduct of whales used in perfumes and other products.

Such suspicions are reasonable, especially considering it wasn’t long ago, in 2001, that the locally nicknamed “Blobster” washed up on Newfoundland’s Fortune Bay. It’s no wonder people thought the Blobster was a blobby sea monster, considering it was a massive, oozing, battered white mass.

It wasn’t until months after residents saw the Blobster that Memorial University of Newfoundland researchers determined the so-called sea monster was actually part of a decomposing sperm whale corpse. However, scientists have ruled out whales as a possible source of these new blobs.

So, if not from a whale, what about a sea sponge or other oceanic biological entities? Nope. Not those either. In fact, Nadine Wells, a scientist at Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), told Lindsay Jones of The Globe and Mail in an email:

"We are fairly certain that the mystery substance that has been getting media attention is not a sea sponge, nor does it have any biological material."

Meanwhile, Bayard told Mukhtar that preliminary laboratory analysis by the ECCC agency suggested the blob material “could be plant-based” but emphasized that further study was needed "before a final determination can be made on the substance and its potential impacts."

If the blobs aren’t plant material or biological, are they human-made?

Human Made?

While many online speculations revolved around the blobs being various gooey whale byproducts, McGrath’s suspicions went in another direction. He thought the blobby substance might be discharged from ships traveling through the area to and from the Come By Chance refinery, which is almost 55 miles (88 kilometers) north of Patrick’s Cove, where McGrath first saw the mysterious blobs.

Wells doesn’t know if the blobs came from the ships, but in a phone interview, she told Jones another reason she and her colleagues don’t believe these mysterious blobs are sea sponges is,

“because there have been people lighting it on fire and it burns. We figure there must be some type of oil in there.”

On October 10, Jones reported that federal scientists still hadn’t identified the strange blobs but could confirm they weren’t biofuel or biodiesel, nor were they petroleum hydrocarbon or petroleum lubricant.

By October 15, Cecco reported that federal scientists “know more about what it’s not than what it is” and that McGrath had said:

“An answer would be nice. It’s not often you find something that stumps people who know this place and these waters.”

Then, on October 27, Hilary Corlett, an assistant professor with Memorial University's earth sciences department, told Elizabeth Whitten of CBC News that while she doesn’t have a definitive answer for what these blobs are made of, she has “a hunch.”

Like many scientists, Corlett was curious about these blobs and decided to investigate where they might have come from. So, she went out and collected some of them to bring back to her lab. It was then that she noticed something curious: one of the larger blobs had an irregular surface, and when she flipped it over, there were impressions on the blob’s surface that resembled the pebbles it had been lying on and even had two pebbles lodged in it. Another blob had algae stuck to it. She told Whitten:

"I tried to pull them loose and basically you couldn't. They were totally encased in the blob. I don't think that there's any way that you could have this perfect impression of these pebbles and the algae if it wasn't something that was liquid at first.”

Corlett believes it’s likely the liquid, wherever it came from, solidified when it came into contact with the cold waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

More specifically, she suspects the blobs are made of a polymer because of how rigid and defined the impressions were. Further support for Corlett’s idea came when she had an allergic reaction after accidentally brushing her arm against a blob while removing it from its collection bag. The reaction she got was similar to the reaction she gets from certain types of latex. She described the incident to Whitten:

"My arm started to feel itchy and that smell when I opened the bag it just hit me. It just smelled like something that I'd smelled before. I definitely smelled [something] sort of plasticky — definitely like a man-made product."

Corlett also said she plans on analyzing the samples further by using facilities on the MUN campus and by warming a blob in a hot bath to see if it reverts into a liquid.

While she may be on to something, the fact remains that there’s still no definitive answer for what these mysterious, white, squishy blobs washing up on Canada’s northeastern coastline are — or where they came from.

Perspective Shift

We’ll have to wait a bit longer before scientists can determine what, precisely, these strange blobs are, but it seems more likely than not that they’re a result of human activity.

Considering Corlett and Wells's assessments and that these blobs aren’t washing up anywhere else, I tend to lean toward McGrath’s hypothesis that the blobs are likely the result of discharge from the ships in the area coming to and leaving the refinery in the region — or maybe from the refinery itself.

Still, while the blobs might be the result of human activity, it’s exciting when a mystery arises that baffles experts. These experiences remind us, even just temporarily, how much we don’t know about the mysterious Global Ocean in the 21st century — even with our advanced technology.

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Image by Dave McGrath