Arctic Mystery: Identifying the Great Blob of Alaska

Wesley Loy / Anchorage – Sat Jul 18, 3:30 pm ET

A group of hunters aboard a small boat out of the tiny Alaska village of Wainwright were the first to spot what would eventually be called "the blob." It was a dark, floating mass stretching for miles through the Chukchi Sea, a frigid and relatively shallow expanse of Arctic Ocean water between Alaska's northwest coast and the Russian Far East. The goo was fibrous, hairy. When it touched floating ice, it looked almost black.

But what was it? An oil slick? Some sort of immense, amorphous organism adrift in some of the planet's most remote waters? Maybe a worrisome sign of global climate change? Or was it something insidious and, perhaps, even carnivorous like the man-eating jello from the old Steve McQueen movie that inspired the Alaskan phenomenon's nickname? (Read Richard Corliss' review of The Thing, a sci-fi film set in the Arctic.)

The hunters got word to the U.S. Coast Guard, which immediately sent two spill response experts to fly over the mass, which looked sort of rusty from the air. They also approached it by boat. The North Slope Borough, the local government for the vast and sparsely populated cap of Alaska, sent its own people out the main village of Barrow to have a look. They scooped up jars of the stuff for analysis in a state lab in Anchorage.

"We responded as if it were an oil product," says Coast Guard Petty Officer Terry Hasenauer. "It was described to us as an oil-like substance, thick and lingering below the surface of the water. Those characteristics can indicate heavy, degraded oil, maybe crude oil, or possibly an intermediate fuel oil." Meanwhile, the story spread over the internet like an oil-spill, giving lots of people a queasy feeling. (Check out a story about the coming battle for the resources of the Arctic.)

Test results released Thursday showed the blob wasn't oil, but a plant - a massive bloom of algae. While that may seem less dangerous, a lot of people are still uneasy. It's something the mostly Inupiat Eskimo residents along Alaska's northern coast say they could never remember seeing before. (See pictures of the Arctic.)

Algal blooms are a common and often menacing event along many U.S. coastlines. Some strains are toxic and can close beaches and poison seafood, posing a hazard to consumers. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration maintains a forecasting system for the Gulf of Mexico to warn of harmful Florida blooms. On Thursday, on the other side of the continent, U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, a Maine Republican, urged NOAA to direct at least $500,000 to assess a disastrous red tide - a form of algal bloom. "The state of Maine is currently besieged by the most virulent red tide event ever recorded in the region," Snowe wrote. "As a result of this outbreak, virtually the entire coast of our state has been closed to the harvest of clams, mussels, ocean quahogs, and other shellfish."

While Alaskans may find the algal blob unusual if not frightening, scientists say that algal blooms are nothing new in Arctic Ocean waters, though the blob itself might be a little weird. Brenda Konar, a marine biology professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, said algal outbreaks can and do occur even in icy Arctic waters. It just takes the right combination of nutrients, light and water temperature, she said. "Algae blooms," she says. "It's sort of like a swimming pool that hasn't been cleaned in a while." The blob, Konar said, is a microalgae made up of "billions and billions of individuals." "We've observed large blooms in the past off Barrow although none of them at all like this," Barry Sherr, an Oregon State University professor of oceanography, said in an e-mail. "The fact that the locals say they've never seen anything like it suggests that it might represent some exotic species which has drifted into the region, perhaps as a result of global change. For the moment that's just a guess."

So far in Alaska, nothing suggests the Chukchi Sea blob is toxic, although the Coast Guard's Hasenauer said toxicity tests were planned. In any case, virtually no commercial seafood production comes from the waters along Alaska's northern coast, but residents do fish, hunt whales and harvest other animals as part of a traditional subsistence lifestyle. In the meantime, the blob for the most part is staying away from the shoreline and slowly drifting farther and farther away.

View this article on Time.com

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090718/us_time/08599191151700

Mystery Goo in Alaska Could Be Another New Species

July 16, 2009 02:00 PM
by Haley A. Lovett

Scientists think that samples of the smelly blackish goo floating off the coast of Wainwright, Alaska, will show that the glob is made up of organic matter.

Experts, Residents Have Never Seen Anything Like Alaskan Goo

Scientists and members of the Coast Guard who have seen the globs of goo say that it is definitely not an oil spill, as was thought based on initial reports. “It has no characteristics of an oil, or a hazardous substance,” Terry Hasenauer of the Coast Guard told Don Hunter of the Anchorage Daily News.

Area official Gordon Brower told the Daily News that no one in the area can remember ever seeing anything like the dark mass of goo floating in the Ocean, which prompted concern among locals. The mass has been tangling up jellyfish and birds, and appears to have “hairy strands” in it. Some have speculated that it may be a new type of algae, but for the most part officials are reluctant to speculate until test results come back. If the matter turns out to be an animal, it could join the list of the Weirdest Creatures on Earth.

In March of this year scientists in Yellowstone discovered a new type of algae that could detoxify arsenic in the environment, giving them new hope about the possibility of organisms surviving in harsh environments, and potentially on other planets.

http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/science/2009/july/Mystery-Goo-in-Alaska-Could-Be-Another-New-Species-.html

Huge blob of Arctic goo floats past Slope communities

IT'S NOT OIL: No one in the area can recall seeing anything like it before.
By DON HUNTER
dhunter@adn.com

Published: July 14th, 2009 10:48 PM
Last Modified: July 15th, 2009 02:02 PM

Something big and strange is floating through the Chukchi Sea between Wainwright and Barrow.

Hunters from Wainwright first started noticing the stuff sometime probably early last week. It's thick and dark and "gooey" and is drifting for miles in the cold Arctic waters, according to Gordon Brower with the North Slope Borough's Planning and Community Services Department.

Brower and other borough officials, joined by the U.S. Coast Guard, flew out to Wainwright to investigate. The agencies found "globs" of the stuff floating miles offshore Friday and collected samples for testing.

Later, Brower said, the North Slope team in a borough helicopter spotted a long strand of the stuff and followed it for about 15 miles, shooting video from the air.

The next day the floating substance arrived offshore from Barrow, about 90 miles east of Wainwright, and borough officials went out in boats, collected more samples and sent them off for testing too.

Nobody knows for sure what the gunk is, but Petty Officer 1st Class Terry Hasenauer says the Coast Guard is sure what it is not.

"It's certainly biological," Hasenauer said. "It's definitely not an oil product of any kind. It has no characteristics of an oil, or a hazardous substance, for that matter.

"It's definitely, by the smell and the makeup of it, it's some sort of naturally occurring organic or otherwise marine organism."

Something else: No one in Barrow or Wainwright can remember seeing anything like this before, Brower said.

"That's one of the reasons we went out, because in recent history I don't think we've seen anything like this," he said. "Maybe inside lakes or in stagnant water or something, but not (in the ocean) that we could recall ...

"If it was something we'd seen before, we'd be able to say something about it. But we haven't ...which prompted concerns from the local hunters and whaling captains."

The stuff is "gooey" and looks dark against the bright white ice floating in the Arctic Ocean, Brower said.

"It's pitch black when it hits ice and it kind of discolors the ice and hangs off of it," Brower said. He saw some jellyfish tangled up in the stuff, and someone turned in what was left of a dead goose -- just bones and feathers -- to the borough's wildlife department.

"It kind of has an odor; I can't describe it," he said.

Hasenauer said he hasn't heard any reports of waterfowl or marine animals turning up.

Brower said it wouldn't necessarily surprise him if the substance turns out to be some sort of naturally occurring phenomenon, but the borough is waiting until it gets the analysis back from the samples before officials say anything more than they're not sure what it is.

"From the air it looks brownish with some sheen, but when you get close and put it up on the ice and in the bucket, it's kind of blackish stuff ... (and) has hairy strands on it."

Hasenauer said the Coast Guard's samples are being analyzed in Anchorage. Results may be back sometime next week, he said.

The two Coast Guard experts sent up to overfly the area with the borough said they saw nothing that resembled an oil slick, Hasenauer said.

"We brought back one sample of what they believe to be an algae," he said, and a big algae bloom is one possibility.

"It's textbook for us to consider algae because of all the false reports of oil spills we've had in the past. It's one of the things that typically comes up" when a report turns out not to be an oil spill after all.

But, he said, "there's all types of natural phenomena that it could be."

Meanwhile, the brownish-blackish gunk is drifting along the coast to the northeast, Brower said.

"This stuff is moving with the current," he said. "It's now on beyond Barrow and probably going north at this point. And people are still encountering it out here off Barrow."

For the most part, the mystery substance seems to have stayed away from shore.

"We did get some residents saying it was being pushed against the shoreline by ice in some areas," Brower said, "but then we get another east wind and it gets pushed back out there."

http://www.adn.com/2835/story/864687.html

Arctic sea full of huge blobs of floating 'goo'

Huge blobs of mysterious "goo" are floating in the Arctic sea off the coast of Alaska, according to local reports.

By Heidi Blake
Published: 7:46PM BST 15 Jul 2009

Hunters from the Alaskan coastal town of Wainwright first noticed the dark, shiny substance floating for miles in the icy Arctic waters of the Chukchi sea, according to reports in the Anchorage Daily News.

The odorous substance, which has been described variously as "goey", "gunky" and "hairy" has been also been found of the coast of Barrow, 72 miles north east of Wainwright.

Samples of the huge "gobs of gunk" were taken on Friday by officials from the North Slope Borough, who flew out to Wainwright with the US Coast Guard to investigate. Jelly fish and a dead goose were found tangled up in stands of the substance.

The "goo", which is believed to be formed of organic matter, is reportedly floating in strands of up to 15-miles long.

The US Coast Guard told the Anchorage Daily News that the strange find is not an oil product or a hazardous substance of any kind.

"It's definitely, by the smell and make-up of it, some sort of naturally occurring organic or otherwise marine organism," said Petty Officer 1st Class Terry Hasenauer.

"In recent history I don't think we've seen anything like this," he added.

Gordon Brower of the North Slope Borough's planning department described what he had seen floating in the Arctic sea.

"From the air it looks brownish with some sheen, but when you get close and put it up on the ice and in the bucket, it's kind of blackish stuff and has hairy strands on it," he said.

The samples of the substance taken by the coast guard are being analysed in Anchorage, with results expected next week.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/5835975/Arctic-sea-full-of-huge-blobs-of-floating-goo.html