Newfoundland beach blobs are plastic pollution, but source remains unknown: scientist

A Memorial University scientist says the mysterious white blobs washing up on Newfoundland beaches are actually gobs of plastic -- and they need to be cleaned up.

A scientist has determined that the strange white blobs puzzling Newfoundland beachcombers are made of a plastic commonly found in adhesives, but the origin of the mysterious goo is still unknown.

Hilary Corlett, an Earth sciences specialist at Memorial University, collected several of the sticky globs from a beach in Arnold's Cove, N.L., last month and gave them to a colleague for testing. The results, she said, came in late last week: it was polyvinyl acetate, often found in glue.

"It is pollution," Corlett said in an interview Tuesday. "It's plastic. It needs to be cleaned up."

Members of a Newfoundland and Labrador beachcombers group on Facebook began sharing pictures of the bizarre gunk in September, asking if anyone knew what it was. Group members had many suggestions, some more helpful than others: slime moulds, whale boogers, or toutons -- fried dollops of bread dough popular in Newfoundland breakfasts.

Corlett was intrigued. She studies marine microplastics and figured she had to go find a sample for herself. She said she was amazed to find about 20 of the mysterious mounds within her first few steps onto the small beach about 100 kilometres northwest of St. John's.

"There's a lot of them," she said.

They smell like plastic, like "that smell when you walk into a Canadian Tire," Corlett said. Some had imprints of rocks and pebbles, as if they'd once been liquid.