diff --git a/oyster/scripts/signal.py b/oyster/scripts/signal.py
index 784070c..d5b5c18 100644
--- a/oyster/scripts/signal.py
+++ b/oyster/scripts/signal.py
@@ -25,7 +25,8 @@ def main():
     if args.sample:
         print 'sampling 100 documents'
         docs = docs.limit(100)
-        task = current_app.tasks[name]
+        module, name = args.task.rsplit('.', 1)
+        task = getattr(__import__(module, fromlist=[name]), name)
         for doc in docs:
             task.apply((doc['_id'],))