Tar Mat Washes Up On Central Fla. Beach, WKMG Channel 6 Orlando, June 30, 2010:
Officials await tests this week to determine whether a pancake-sized tar mat, picked up on Melbourne Beach, came from the BP oil spill...
Florida Today
"Nobody should be touching anything," [Cindy Leckey, a supervisor for Brevard Environmental Health Services] told Local 6 News partner Florida Today. Dial 211 to report it instead, she said.
Chris Davis, visiting from Tennessee, said he found the tar mat Friday while walking the beach. ... "It smells like asphalt."
Coast Guard officials cut out a 1-inch square segment of the tar for testing, Davis said. The rest he keeps in a jar as a souvenir.
Tourist discovers tar mat on Melbourne Beach, Florida Today, June 30, 2010:
Chris Davis was on the beach near the end of Eau Gallie Causeway with his father Friday night when he spotted a glob of tar in the moonlight.
A June 20 article, It's no longer 'if' in Florida but 'how much', reported on another strange occurence, just 20 miles north of Melbourne, FL in Cocoa Beach:
[M]any of these wildlife officers are seeing strange things. Last week, an officer from Cocoa Beach, Fla., filmed a large hammerhead shark less than half a mile from shore -- part of a phenomenon that scientists suspect could be marine life pushing closer to the land in order to escape deeper habitats polluted by the Deepwater Horizon oil well leak.
