Toronto — Beaches across Canada’s far northeast Newfoundland and Labrador province have increasingly been littered with mysterious white blobs. Their appearance has so far befuddled scientists, and led Canadian officials in the region to launch an investigation.

Beachgoers first noticed the unusual blobs on the shores of Newfoundland and Labrador in September. People quickly started sharing photos of the gelatinous clumps on a Facebook group with more than 40,000 members that is dedicated to exploring the region’s coastal areas.

“Anyone know what these blobs are. They are like touton dough and all over the beach,” wrote Philip Grace on the Beachcombers Facebook group, comparing the finds to a regional dish. “These were in sizes ranging from dinner plate size right down to a toonie [Canadian 2-dollar coin].”

Some people speculated online that the mystery blobs could be the result of ships dumping substances into the ocean. Others suggested they could be whale sperm, whale vomit or even ambergris, a byproduct of sperm whales that’s valued for its use in perfumes and other products. 

But the experts weren’t to be dragged into the speculation.

Environment and Climate Change Canada, the government agency responsible for investigating the mystery, simply referred to the blobs as “a mystery substance” when asked by CBS News on Tuesday.

Newfoundland resident David McGrath told The Guardian newspaper that he’d seen hundreds of the items scattered across his local beaches.

“They looked just like a pancake before you flip it over, when it has those dimpled little bubbles. I poked a couple with a stick and they were spongy and firm inside,” he told the newspaper. “I’ve lived here for 67 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this. Never.”

“They sent the Coast Guard over and I asked them how bad it was. They told me they had 28 miles of coastline littered with this stuff and had no idea what it was,” McGrath said. “Is it toxic? It is safe for people to touch?” 

Samantha Bayard, a spokesperson for Environment and Climate Change Canada, told CBS News the agency was first informed about the “mystery substance” on beaches on Sept. 7. Environmental emergency officers visited sites at least three times to assess the situation and collect samples.

“To date, ECCC has conducted several aerial, underwater and manual surveys of the beaches and shorelines in the area to determine the extent of the substance, what it is and its potential source,” she said. “At this time, neither the substance nor its source has been identified.”

Bayard said a preliminary laboratory analysis by the agency suggested the material “could be plant-based,” but stressed that additional analysis was required “before a final determination can be made on the substance and its potential impacts.”

Stan Tobin, a local environmentalist, told CBS News’ partner network BBC News that he’d found “hundreds and hundreds of blobs — big blobs, little blobs.”

“Somebody or somebodies know where this came from and how it got there, and knows damn well it’s not supposed to be here,” Tobin told the BBC.

Bayard said the ECCC was committed to addressing pollution incidents and environmental threats with urgency.

“If enforcement officers find evidence of a possible violation of federal environmental legislation, they will take appropriate action in accordance with the applicable Compliance and Enforcement Policy,” she told CBS News.

The death toll from Hurricane Milton rose to at least 16 on Friday, officials in Florida said, as residents began the painful process of piecing their lives and homes back together.

Nearly 2.5 million households and businesses were still without power, and some areas in the path cut through the Sunshine State by the monster storm from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean remained flooded.

Milton crashed into the Florida Gulf Coast late on Wednesday as a Category 3 storm, with powerful winds smashing communities still reeling from Hurricane Helene two weeks ago, which killed 237 people across the US southeast, including in Florida.

So far, though, it appeared that tornadoes, rather than floodwaters, were responsible for many of the storm’s deaths.

“It was pretty scary,” said Susan Stepp, a 70-year-old resident of Fort Pierce, a city on Florida’s Atlantic coast where four people died in a tornado spawned by Milton.

“They did find some people just outside dead, in a tree,” she told AFP. “I wish they would have evacuated.” Stepp’s husband Bill said a tornado “picked up my 22-ton motor home and threw it across the yard.”

“Scary and heartbreaking at the same time, to see much damage and all things you really love just gone, but it’s only things, and we’re still here,” the 72-year-old said.

At least six people were killed in St Lucie County, four in Volusia County, two in Pinellas County, and one each in Hillsborough, Polk, Orange and Citrus counties, local officials said.

The storm downed power lines, shredded the roof of the Tampa baseball stadium and inundated homes, but Florida was able to avoid the level of catastrophic devastation that officials had feared.

“The storm was significant, but thankfully this was not the worst-case scenario,” Governor Ron DeSantis told a news conference.

The National Weather Service issued 126 tornado warnings across the state on Wednesday, the most ever issued for a single calendar day for the state in records dating back to 1986, wrote hurricane expert Michael Lowry.

“It is not easy to think you have everything and suddenly you have nothing,” said Lidier Rodriguez, who was forced to leave his flooded apartment near Tampa Bay.

‘Get a life’

Search operations were ongoing on Friday, and the Coast Guard reported the spectacular rescue of a boat captain who rode out the storm clinging to a cooler in the Gulf of Mexico.

“This man survived in a nightmare scenario for even the most experienced mariner,” Dana Grady, the US Coast Guard’s Sector St Petersburg command centre chief, said in a statement.

President Joe Biden on Thursday urged people to stay inside in the aftermath of the storm, with downed power lines and debris creating dangerous conditions.

In a video posted on social media, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said he and his wife Melania were praying for Florida residents affected by the storm and urged them to vote for him.

“Hopefully, on January 20th you’re going to have somebody that’s really going to help you and help you like never before,” the former president said, referring to the presidential inauguration date.

Hurricane Helene struck Florida late last month, and the back-to-back storms have become election fodder as Trump spreads conspiracy theories claiming Biden and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris are abandoning victims.

Biden snapped back on Thursday, telling Trump to “get a life.”

‘Wake-up call’

Scientists say extreme rainfall and destructive storms are occurring with greater severity and frequency as temperatures rise due to climate change. As warmer ocean surfaces release more water vapour, they provide more energy for storms as they form.

“There is no question it needs to be a serious wake-up call for everyone in terms of climate change,” Kristin Joyce, a 72-year-old interior designer, told AFP in Sarasota Bay as she surveyed the damage.

In the ocean food chain, large sharks generally only have to worry about keeping orcas at bay — but a new study suggests the apex predators may have to watch out for their own.

Researchers have discovered evidence pointing to the first known case of a porbeagle shark — which can grow up to 12 feet long and 500 pounds — being killed by a large shark predator. The findings were published Tuesday in the biology journal Frontiers in Marine Science.

This isn’t the first case of “shark cannibalism,”  said Jon Dodd, executive director of the Atlantic Shark Institute, which helped lead the study. Larger sharks eating smaller sharks is a common occurrence, “in the open ocean, size matters, but there is always something bigger,” he said. 

In some cases — bull sharks, mako sharks and baby sand tiger sharks, for example — sharks will even eat their own species.

But cases of large sharks eating other large sharks, the subject of this study, are few and far between, said lead author Dr. Brooke Anderson, a marine biologist for the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality. 

The fatality of the female porbeagle raises questions about whether this incident represents a wider trend among large predators, said Anderson. “With the advancements in technology, it’s possible that this happens more frequently than we’ve just really been able to discover,” said Anderson.  

The number of sharks eaten by other sharks is impossible to know, said Dodd adding, “but if our experiences at the Atlantic Shark Institute are an indicator, it might be more than we think.”

A group of scientific researchers from across the U.S. discovered the porbeagle death while conducting a satellite tracking project in the Northwestern Atlantic to better understand the shark species’ whereabouts, behaviors and environmental preferences. They were particularly curious about female porbeagles, which are known to traverse long swaths of the ocean to deliver their pups. 

“We were really seeking to understand the habitats used by the pregnant females and try to figure out where they might be going to give birth,” said Anderson.

The victim of the attack, nicknamed Penelope by researchers, was one of the 11 sharks scientists tagged off the coast of Cape Cod in 2020 and 2022. Tracking tags were placed on the dorsal fins of the sharks and used to collect information on water depth and temperature. The tags stored the data until they eventually fell off the sharks, at which point the data was transmitted back to the researchers via satellite.

The tracking devices were designed to stay on for a year, but five months into the experiment, Penelope’s data had already come in. “As soon as I got the data from that tag, I immediately knew something weird had happened,” Anderson said. 

A few days before Penelope’s tag popped off along the coast of Bermuda, the temperature of the water suddenly spiked. It remained relatively high, even when it reached 600 meters below sea level, which is “very unusual,” Anderson explained.

Anderson and her colleagues came to a harrowing conclusion: the porbeagle had been hunted and eaten by another behemoth of the sea. “The only explanation for that data is that this tab is now in the stomach of a predator,” Anderson told CBS News.

Researchers don’t know with 100% certainty what the culprit was, but the diving pattern of the predator, which researchers tracked by looking at the depth data collected by the tag, was similar to that of white sharks they’ve monitored in the past. “Based on that, it was likely, I’d guess, a mature female white shark,” said Anderson.

Porbeagles, which have historically been overfished, are considered endangered in certain parts of the world. Given they are already at risk, Anderson said the loss of pregnant females and their babies could prove devastating to the population.

And sharks aren’t the only ones that could feel the ripple effects of this change. The rulers of the deep maintain the balance of the underwater ecosystem by keeping smaller predator populations in check and adding vital nutrients to shallow waters. 

“Humans heavily rely on oceans for food and many other things and the oceans need healthy shark populations,” Anderson said.