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- NEW
YORK - It had all the
makings of a great
science-fiction mystery.
-
- Idle imaginations were churning out X-Files-esque
scenarios,
even as they poked at the blobs
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- But the strange, rubberlike
blobs that recently washed
ashore on New Jersey beaches turned out not
to be space aliens. Neither
were they: a new toxic threat spawned by
global warming, whale blubber
dumped by poachers, or any of the other
conspiracy theories that loyal
readers had speculated to Fox News
Online via e-mail.
-
- Rather, the five to seven tons of mysterious rubberlike
chunks
that stumped state environmental officials when they washed ashore,
turned out to be, well, just rubber. Or at least the synthetic version
of it; the test results from a Louisiana Tech laboratory showed it was
a polymer of latex, which is used for everything from condoms to window
caulk.
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- However, one mundane mystery remains: Where did it come
from?
Lt. Dan Higman, the Coast Guard investigator in charge of the case,
concedes, "We'll probably never know where it came from." He
compared finding the source of the spill to determining who is responsible
for the smog in New York City.
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- "It's hard to say if it was a vessel source, land
source... There's just no way to thin it down," he said.
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- "Is there a
Trojan plant up there?" Higman
joked, referring to the condom
manufacturer.
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- The rubber blobs began washing ashore to the puzzlement
of
beachgoers on Labor Day and continued for the next few days. In all,
Higman said an estimated five to seven tons of the blobs were collected
from beaches including Atlantic City, Ocean City, Sea Isle City and
Strathmere.
-
- Loretta O'Donnell, a spokesperson for the state Department
of
Environmental Protection (DEP), said an emergency DEP response crew
was
mobilized as soon as the blobs were reported. The DEP's initial field
tests showed the blobs were nonradioactive and nontoxic, so the beaches
were kept open while municipal workers from the towns carted the
yards-long
chunks off to landfills, O'Donnell said.
-
- "Obviously,
latex isn't a hazard... washing up on
the beach," Higman
said.
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- But
before the lab determined it to be latex, idle imaginations
were
churning out X-Files-esque scenarios on the beaches, even as they
poked
the blobs with bare feet and hands.
-
- And once the story hit
cyberspace, Fox News Online was
swamped with theories.
-
- "I think it's
definitely an X-File, man. Put Agents
Mulder and Scully on it,"
wrote one reader. "Is it a pre-cursor
to an alien attack?"
asked another.
-
- Of course, in a different time " namely the 1980s
"
New York and New Jersey beachgoers were more accustomed to strange
things washing up on the beaches. But the assorted medical waste and trash
that landed on beaches has become more rare, mainly because of a larger
awareness and crackdown on ocean dumping.
-
- "I'm sure there's some
illegal dumping going on,"
said Tony Totah of New Jersey's Clean
Ocean Action nonprofit group. "(But)
they've found ways of
tracking it."
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- Still, Higman said the Coast Guard is not too confident
it will
find the source of the spill, even though it was "one of the
most
unusual" he's ever seen.
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- "Big white globs washing up on the beach isn't
something
you see every day," Higman said.
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