Another Gelatinous Blob, but This One Stinks

Friday, August 8, 2003

(10:11 AM ET) (14:11 GMT)

The Associated Press

"We've determined that it's not toxic. It's mostly like some algae or fungus. It may be an algae growth that lived on the bottom of the lagoon and after its life cycle ended, gases brought it up to the surface.”
-- DEP spokesman Jack Kaskey

“In the dead-end lagoons, you normally see vegetative material that rots, fish kills or dissolved oxygen problems, but I've never seen anything like this. It's strange."
-- Robert Ingenito, Ocean County Health Department

LITTLE EGG HARBOR TOWNSHIP, N.J. -- AP
It smells like rotten eggs at best, decomposing flesh at worst. It looks like the pods from "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."

To the people whose homes back up onto a Tuckerton Creek tributary where the gelatinous substance recently appeared, it's just "The Blob."

"It's frightening," said Eileen Masterson. "We can't swim because the odor is so horrible and we won't crab here because we don't know whether it's safe."

The substance, which was noticed about two weeks ago, consists of jelly-like bulbs that undulate with the waves just below the surface.

By most accounts, it generally stays submerged in about 8 feet of water in the lagoon. At low tide, some of it pokes through the surface of the water, looking like marbled rocks.
(More: CNN.com)
2003 © The Associated Press.

Hmm-m... Not to be confused with Chile’s giant, baffling blob.

Dan