White ‘Blobs’ Washing Up on Canada’s Shores Stump Residents and Scientists

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 teeth, tools or even a doll’s head.

Weird, white mystery blobs are another matter.

“It’s the first time I’ve ever seen anything like it, and I’ve lived right here in Placentia Bay my whole life,” said David McGrath, a 67-year-old retiree who stumbled across the mysterious newcomers last month.

The Canadian Coast Guard was notified. Beaches on the southern shores of the North Atlantic isle were briefly roped off. A federal agency began investigating.

The blobs range in size from a coin to a dinner plate. They come in an almost pristine white before mixing with sand and turning darker. They are sticky. And they are — this the main thing — indisputably blobby.

After that, there is some disagreement.

Some say the blobs carry a whiff of odor not unlike paint.

But Mr. McGrath said he had not detected that, even when he broke one of them apart with a stick, though that may have been because the air was heavy with the smell of salt. “The ocean was a little frisky at the time,” he said.

Another beachcomber, Philip Grace, said that he and his wife were walking along the bay last month when they ran across first a scattering of blobs and then many of them. Like Mr. McGrath, he decided to pry one apart.