Goodness gracious great balls of scum!

[Taro Toporific]

82-year Lake Akanko mystery solved
The Asahi Shimbun, 09/01/2005
Balls of endangered "marimo" algae are finally spotted bobbing up near the water surface of Lake Akanko, Hokkaido. This is the only place the spheres form naturally.
Scientists have always scoffed at the idea. Green balls of marimo algae rising to the surface of the lake on their own as if by magic, only to sink again at night? Nonsense. Nobody had ever seen it.....
Now one botanist has proved all the skeptics wrong-the marimo spheres really do float....more...

[Big Booger]

looks like a giant booger...

[sillygirl]

I saw on that awful Trivia tv show (with Tamori) that in fact those them balls are hand rolled by old ladies, and they are not naturally all round and that....

(cue buzzer noise 'he he he')

[puargs]

[Taro Toporific]

[Taro Toporific]

TKY200509010089.jpeg

Student sentenced for importing fish tank algae
TVNZ.co.nz | October 03, 2012
...Jasmine Maxwell, 20, appeared at the Christchurch District Court today for illegally importing marimo moss balls, a type of fish tank algae, last year.The moss balls are prohibited here as authorities say the algae could wipe out entire species of New Zealand native fish...the Ministry of Primary Industries said because marimo is a green algae, it could interrupt the whole ecological system...more...

Marimokkori_big_balls.jpg

captain-hard-on-of-hokkaido.jpeg

Shown above is, "Marimokkori", the scumball character based on marimo lake algae balls of Hokkaido Japan. wikipedia.org/wiki/Marimokkori

[Russell]

Shown above is, "Marimokkori", the scumball character based on marimo lake algae balls of Hokkaido Japan. wikipedia.org/wiki/Marimokkori

Fornicate, they even gave it a dick.

[matsuki]

WTF Japan?! (if I had 100Yen for everytime I said that...)

[Taro Toporific]

"Marimokkori", the scumball character based on marimo lake algae balls of Hokkaido Japan. wikipedia.org/wiki/Marimokkori

marimokkori-big-balls.jpg

[Taro Toporific]

Green Alien Eggs Spotted on Sydney Beach Could be Algae Seaweed Hairballs?
microfinancemonitor.com | 2014/09/21
Morning Bay Watchers at the Sydney Beach were stunned to find round green algae-like eggs spread over in thousands ashore and some sufers say they are alien eggs left behind by Unidentified Flying Objects of UFOs.
Found in Dee Why, on Sydney’s North Shore, the overnight appearance of the alien eggs are brushed aside as mere sponge-like seaweed that forms egg shapes possibly to protect themselves from predators. Locals said they never witnessed such a strange phenomenon of “alien hairballs” looking like Japanese moss balls or UFOs...
More...

alien-eggs-300x259.jpg

[wagyl]

Thanks, Taro, for keeping an eye on the Micro-Finance Monitor for us, a hotbed of articles on Indian politics, Indian sports, and all things extraterrestrial, waiting for something with a Japan link. Your patience eventually paid off.

And thank you to the Micro-Finance Monitor for having a Google News alert on UFO so that is could nick a story from the Daily Mail, and combine quotes from two different people into one. Classic Daily Fail: "Scientists Baffled" is a way to put the following into a clickbait subheading

One hypothesis is that a ball-shape helps protect the algae from hungry fish, another that it may help them roll back into the water and avoid drying out when they wash ashore.

The Daily Fail sourced the story from a local interest community paper and Murdoch stablemate The Manly Daily. It contains beautiful pictures complete with jpeg compression artefacts (OK so I shouldn't view mobile device versions on a desktop) and cheesy composition, links to a UFO sighting, and Japanese moss balls in the text.

[matsuki]

Dee Why?? Almost as bad as... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zzyzx,_California

[wagyl]

Dee Why?? Almost as bad as... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zzyzx,_California

Dee Why, just north of Curl Curl, is not so bad. I would tend to focus on the genuinely homoerotic origins of Manly.