‘The first thing I did was poke it’: Canada beach blobs mystery solved by chemists

Newfoundland Memorial Univeristy team find white masses are likely material used to clean pipes in oil industry

When the chemist Chris Kozak finally got his hands on a sample of the mysterious blobs that recently washed up on the shores of Newfoundland’s beaches, Project Unknown Glob officially began.

At his disposal, Kozak and a team of graduate students had the “gorgeous” new science building and “world class facilities” of Newfoundland’s Memorial University to run a battery of tests on the white, doughy blob.