Naturalists aren't 100% sure how lake balls form and exactly what they are, but they seem to be vegetative fragments that get caught together in a repetitive swirl that somehow fuse together into a ball shape. They are sometimes whimsically referred to as whale burps, which really appeals to me!
It's not living ... well, even if it were once, it doesn't stink for having been out of the water for a week. It looks like a collection of pine needles, all aligned together, with one end different from the other in shape.
I have no idea what it is that keeps it 'glued' together so it doesn't fall apart.
We've been finding a lot of them in our lake as we survey for invasive plants from our kayaks, or while snorkeling.
One of these looks a lot like a root ball, as if the roots of a fern have washed into the water. As you can see, each of these looks a little different, structurally and texturally.
We placed one on our boardwalk to display it, but kept finding it displaced each day we strolled past. We returned it to our chosen spot each time, until one day we found it totally shredded. There were just clumps of dry, loose pine needles as evidence - there was nothing to show what had kept it cohesively together.
