A globster or blob is an unidentified organic mass that washes up on the

shoreline A shore or a shoreline is the fringe of land at the edge of a large body of water, such as an ocean, sea, or lake. In physical oceanography, a shore is the wider fringe that is geologically modified by the action of the body of water past a ...

of an ocean or other body of water. A globster is distinguished from a normal beached carcass by being hard to identify, at least by initial untrained observers, and by creating controversy as to its identity.

History

The term "globster" was coined by

Ivan T. Sanderson Ivan Terence Sanderson (January 30, 1911 – February 19, 1973) was a British biologist and writer born in Edinburgh, Scotland, who became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Along with Belgian-French biologist Bernard Heuvelmans, San ...

in 1962 to describe the Tasmanian carcass of 1960, which was said to have "no visible eyes, no defined head, and no apparent bone structure." Other sources simply use the term "blob". Many globsters have initially been described as

gigantic octopus The kraken () is a legendary sea monster of enormous size said to appear off the coasts of Norway. Kraken, the subject of sailors' superstitions and mythos, was first described in the modern age at the turn of the 18th century, in a travelog ...

es, though they later turned out to be decayed carcasses of

whale Whales are a widely distributed and diverse group of fully aquatic placental marine mammals. As an informal and colloquial grouping, they correspond to large members of the infraorder Cetacea, i.e. all cetaceans apart from dolphins and ...

s or large

shark Sharks are a group of elasmobranch fish characterized by a cartilaginous skeleton, five to seven gill slits on the sides of the head, and pectoral fins that are not fused to the head. Modern sharks are classified within the clade Selachi ...

s. As with the "

Chilean Blob The Chilean Blob was a large mass of tissue found on Pinuno Beach in Los Muermos, Chile in July 2003. It weighed and measured across.

" of 2003, many are masses of whale

blubber Blubber is a thick layer of vascularized adipose tissue under the skin of all cetaceans, pinnipeds, penguins, and sirenians. Description Lipid-rich, collagen fiber-laced blubber comprises the hypodermis and covers the whole body, except fo ...

released from decaying whale corpses. Others initially thought to be dead

plesiosaur The Plesiosauria (; Greek: πλησίος, ''plesios'', meaning "near to" and ''sauros'', meaning "lizard") or plesiosaurs are an order or clade of extinct Mesozoic marine reptiles, belonging to the Sauropterygia. Plesiosaurs first appea ...

s later turned out to be the decayed carcasses of

basking shark The basking shark (''Cetorhinus maximus'') is the second-largest living shark and fish, after the whale shark, and one of three plankton-eating shark species, along with the whale shark and megamouth shark. Adults typically reach in leng ...

s. Others remain unexplained.

Giant In folklore, giants (from Ancient Greek: ''gigas'', cognate giga-) are beings of human-like appearance, but are at times prodigious in size and strength or bear an otherwise notable appearance. The word ''giant'' is first attested in 1297 fr ...

and

colossal squid The colossal squid (''Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni'') is part of the family Cranchiidae. It is sometimes called the Antarctic squid or giant cranch squid and is believed to be the largest squid species in terms of mass. It is the only recognize ...

may also explain some globsters, particularly those tentatively identified as monster

octopus An octopus ( : octopuses or octopodes, see below for variants) is a soft-bodied, eight- limbed mollusc of the order Octopoda (, ). The order consists of some 300 species and is grouped within the class Cephalopoda with squids, cuttlefish, ...

es. Some globsters were examined only after they had decomposed too much and seemed to represent evidence of a new species, or were destroyed—as happened with the "''

Cadborosaurus willsi ''Cadborosaurus'', nicknamed Caddy by journalist Archie Wills, is a sea serpent in the folklore of regions of the Pacific Coast of North America. Its name is derived from Cadboro Bay in Greater Victoria, British Columbia, and the Greek root word ...

''" carcass, found in 1937. However, Canadian scientists did analyse the DNA of the Newfoundland Blob—which revealed that the tissue was from a

sperm whale The sperm whale or cachalot (''Physeter macrocephalus'') is the largest of the toothed whales and the largest toothed predator. It is the only living member of the genus ''Physeter'' and one of three extant species in the sperm whale famil ...

. In their resulting paper, the authors point out a number of superficial similarities between the Newfoundland Blob and other globsters, concluding a similar origin for those globsters is likely. Analyses of other globsters have yielded similar results.Pierce, S., G. Smith, T. Maugel & E. Clark 1995
On the Giant Octopus (''Octopus giganteus'') and the Bermuda Blob: homage to A. E. Verrill.
''Biological Bulletin'' 188: 219–230.Pierce, S., S. Massey, N. Curtis, G. Smith, C. Olavarría & T. Maugel 2004
Microscopic, biochemical, and molecular characteristics of the Chilean Blob and a comparison with the remains of other sea monsters: nothing but whales.
''Biological Bulletin'' 206: 125–133.

Notable globsters

The following is a chronological list of carcasses that have been described as globsters or blobs in the literature.Ellis, R. 1994. ''Monsters of the Sea''. Robert Hale, London. *

Stronsay Beast The Stronsay Beast was a large globster that washed ashore on the island of Stronsay (at the time spelled Stronsa), in the Orkney Islands, Scotland, after a storm on 25 September 1808. The carcass measured 55 ft (16.8 m) in length, witho ...

(1808) believed to be a basking shark carcass. *

St. Augustine Monster The St. Augustine Monster is the name given to a large carcass, originally postulated to be the remains of a gigantic octopus, that washed ashore on the United States coast near St. Augustine, Florida, St. Augustine, Florida in 1896. It is someti ...

(1896) – Identified as a whale carcass. *

Trunko Trunko is the nickname for a large unidentified lump of flesh or a decomposed sea creature, a so-called " globster", reportedly sighted in Margate, South Africa on 25 October 1924. The initial source for Trunko was an article entitled "Fish Lik ...

(1924) * Tasmanian Globster (1960) – Identified as a whale carcass. * New Zealand Globster (1965) – Identified as a whale carcass. * Bermuda Blob (1988) – Identified as a whale carcass. * Nantucket Blob (1996) – Identified as a whale carcass. * Bermuda Blob 2 (1997) – Identified as a whale carcass. *

Chilean Blob The Chilean Blob was a large mass of tissue found on Pinuno Beach in Los Muermos, Chile in July 2003. It weighed and measured across.

(2003) – Identified as a whale carcass.

References

{{reflist, 30em Cryptozoology

History

Notable globsters

See also

References