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, 66. "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 first 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 behind Daddy Tucker Drive. At low tide, some of it pokes through the surface of the water, looking like marbled rocks.
But no one's sure if it's animal, vegetable or mineral.
Masterson's husband, Robert J. Masterson, 66, who rows in the lagoon every day, called it "worrisome."
"It's like nothing I've ever seen, and I've been on these waters all my life, better than 50 years," he said. "I've boated in the Caribbean and in Canada and I've never seen anything to compare with it."
Masterson got worried enough looking at it to call the State Police about it on Sunday.
They sent a trooper in a boat, and he alerted the state Department of Environmental Protection and the Ocean County Health Department.
Officials poked at the blob and took samples as part of a half-dozen field tests Tuesday before determining it was not hazardous.
But neither the state nor Health Department officials know for sure what it is.
"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. It's strange," Ingenito said.
Those who live along the lagoon say they want answers before they take any more blue claw crabs out of the lagoon to eat. In the meantime, they're trying to smile.
"The Blob. The Creature From the Black Lagoon. I was teasing my husband about that today, saying that's what it might be. But it's kind of scary," said Elizabeth Bellio, whose home backs up to the lagoon.
Originally posted by ratinacage:if i m not wrong i think there was a B grade horror named after it....hahaha