Big, mysterious blob floating off Alaska coast? It's algae

[babylonsister]

Black goop afloat off Arctic coast identified as algae

ALGAE: Still, experts don't know why there's so much of it.

By KYLE HOPKINS
[email protected]

Published: July 16th, 2009 07:57 PM
Last Modified: July 17th, 2009 04:49 PM


It looks to be a stringy batch of algae. Not bunker oil seeping from an aging, sunken ship. Not a sea monster.

"We got the results back from the lab today," said Ed Meggert of the Department of Environmental Conservation in Fairbanks. "It was marine algae."

Miles of the thick, dark gunk had been spotted floating between Barrow and Wainwright, prompting North Slope Borough officials and the Coast Guard to investigate last week. A sample was sent to a DEC lab in Anchorage, where workers looked at it under a microscope and declared it some kind of simple plant -- an algae, Meggert said.

The goo fast became an Alaska mystery. And the new findings still leave questions unanswered: Why is there so much of it in a region where people say they've never seen anything quite like it?

Local hunters and whalers didn't know what to make of it. The Coast Guard labeled the substance biological, but knew little else. The stuff had hairy strands in it and was tangled with jellyfish, said a borough official.

more...

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/867160.html

Related:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=6074015

[Larkspur]

1. I'm waiting for the SciFi channel to exploit this news into another lame horror fiick

especially since jellyfish were entangled in this stuff. I'm sure SciFi will have it attack other animals and people too.