[SOC] The NJ Mystery Blob

[ng3o]

Any of you live in New Jersey? Hey, if I were you, I wouldn't let my teenage
kids go to any all-night drinking parties out in the woods near Little Egg
Harbor. If I've learned anything from the movies in my 60 years, it's that
one doesn't mess around with unidentified weird phenomena!

Good Luck and 73,
Bill NG3O

Smelly Mystery Blob Takes Over N.J. Town
Fri Aug 8, 9:12 AM ET  Add AP - Feature Stories to My Yahoo!

LITTLE EGG HARBOR TOWNSHIP, N.J. - 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.

But no one's sure what it is.

The state Department of Environmental Protection poked at the blob and took
samples as part of a half-dozen field tests Tuesday before deciding it's not
hazardous.

"We've determined that it's not toxic. It's mostly like some algae or
fungus," said DEP spokesman Jack Kaskey. "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."

Robert Ingenito, environmental health coordinator for the Ocean County
Health Department, said he hadn't seen anything like it in 30 years of
public health work.

"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," he said. "It's strange."