Mulder and Scully have been sent to investigate.

July 16, 2009 10:09 AM

A mysterious black blob of something is floating along the Alaskan coast... and it's biological.According to the Coast Guard, "It's definitely not an oil product of any kind." The strange goop even has a taste for flesh... "[S]omeone turned in what was left of a dead goose -- just bones and feathers..."
posted by SansPoint (111 comments total)

Where's Steve McQueen when you need him??
posted by Bromius at 10:10 AM on July 16 [2 favorites]

ZALGO IS oh no wait he's here
posted by freebird at 10:11 AM on July 16 [10 favorites]

Sarah Palin's soul?
posted by XMLicious at 10:12 AM on July 16 [33 favorites]

Is it a relative of the Raleigh Sewer Monster?
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 10:13 AM on July 16 [2 favorites]

Do we know how Sarah Palin disposes of her used makeup?
posted by Relay at 10:14 AM on July 16

The strange goop even has a taste for flesh...

Trapped by goop ≠ Eaten by goop.
posted by zarq at 10:14 AM on July 16 [5 favorites]

Here is a link to video of the Sewer Monster
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 10:15 AM on July 16

ObIForOne
posted by DU at 10:16 AM on July 16

Didn't Stephen King already write about this, and then adapt it into a segment for one of the Creepshow flicks? Yeah, old news.
posted by owtytrof at 10:17 AM on July 16 [3 favorites]

For twenty bucks and a case of beer, the Hillstrand brothers will clear that right up for you.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 10:17 AM on July 16 [7 favorites]

goddamn Bill Joy is at it again, isn't he?
posted by GuyZero at 10:18 AM on July 16

Damn, owtytrof! And I was so close. "The Raft." Now with earlobe-biting!
posted by ostranenie at 10:18 AM on July 16

So? That thing has a whole continent of people to eat before it hits the east coast!
posted by greenland at 10:19 AM on July 16 [2 favorites]

It's Rush Limbaugh's fan base. Amirite?
posted by MuffinMan at 10:20 AM on July 16

No, it's a black blob.
posted by DU at 10:21 AM on July 16 [35 favorites]

Cryptosporidium
posted by hortense at 10:23 AM on July 16

Maybe it's the black stuff from X-Files that seeps in through your orifices, turns your eyes black and makes you do stuff...
posted by Hairy Lobster at 10:24 AM on July 16 [3 favorites]

Primordial spawn released from eons of frozen slumber by the melting of the polar ice cap. Evolution is about to take an unexpected turn.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:25 AM on July 16 [21 favorites]

from the comments:
That stinking biomass is just Al Gore floating out there saving drowning polar bears.

Recommended for doublethink.
posted by kuujjuarapik at 10:26 AM on July 16

"Goop" is derogatory. They prefer "viscous matter."
posted by Astro Zombie at 10:27 AM on July 16 [7 favorites]

Tasha Yar, watch your ass.
posted by shadow vector at 10:27 AM on July 16 [50 favorites]

Again, I feel as if the X-Files were ahead of its times.
posted by hal_c_on at 10:29 AM on July 16 [4 favorites]

CREEPING BRAIN, CREEPING BRAIN
posted by contraption at 10:30 AM on July 16

I was fine until: (and) has hairy strands on it."

Next, from SyFy!

MMPORG: Massively Multicolored Protozoic ORGanism
posted by elfgirl at 10:31 AM on July 16 [1 favorite]

The flip comment "If Time Travel was possible we'd be up our ears in time travelers telling us all about it!" misses a key point. We *are* up to our ears in time travelers, except they wouldn't think of themselves as tourists. They think of themselves as refugees.

So see, there is a lot of future out there, not all of it good. Sometimes the only way out is a lateral movie through the 4th dimension, dig? Actually doing it is hard enough, and the side-effects can be dangerous, deadly even. It takes years to master effective time-travel and the cost of getting it *wrong* are high enough to discourage only the most talented, brave, stupid, or desperate.

A lot of these temporal flotsam dudes are pretty addled to begin with, even if they established a sold identity in their chosen time-line, suddenly being jerked into a bold new frame of reference is confusing at best. Getting into a new time doesn't guarantee success in it, as the deeply-confusing modern human bones that pop in paleontology can attest.

Not surprisingly, the successful ones tended to work in the creative fields. A lot of their works were called fantasy or science fiction or horror. Fiction, in other words ...but that's the thing, the thing everyone is missing, they're not stories.

They're dairies. Half-faded memories of the future.

So, hold on. The 21st Century is about to play out, and we've already know some of the notes.
posted by The Whelk at 10:32 AM on July 16 [25 favorites]

Wonkette has the scoop.
posted by mullingitover at 10:32 AM on July 16

The ocean is starting to stagnate.
posted by Mister Cheese at 10:32 AM on July 16

Now we know the real reason Palin quit.

Alaskans - run for your lives!!!
posted by jabberjaw at 10:32 AM on July 16

Pepsi Goo
posted by contraption at 10:37 AM on July 16

Nature's back! And it's pissed!
posted by tommasz at 10:40 AM on July 16

Oceanic blooms of noxious organic matter are on the rise all over the world. This is what a "dieing" ocean looks like. Red tide is the most well known in warmer waters.
posted by stbalbach at 10:40 AM on July 16 [7 favorites]

My money's on Melted Mammoths.
posted by Sys Rq at 10:42 AM on July 16

Watch out where the humpbacks go
and don't you eat that black ice floe
posted by rahnefan at 10:42 AM on July 16 [12 favorites]

"it's kind of blackish stuff ... (and) has hairy strands on it."

I think they meant to spell it GOP.....
posted by a womble is an active kind of sloth at 10:47 AM on July 16

"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."

Am I alone here, or is the only obvious logical reaction "freak the hell out"? Kill it with fire, NOW.
posted by contessa at 10:49 AM on July 16 [2 favorites]

Didn't Stephen King already write about this, and then adapt it into a segment for one of the Creepshow flicks?

Seeing this was the precise moment when I stopped watching horror movies. I realized that they scared me -- not just a little bit while I was watching, long term.

In fact, I still have the occasional nightmare about the black goop in that movie, and I can't stand on a wooden dock without thinking about it. I imagine I'll dream about it tonight, and then spend half the night awake trying to avoid dreaming about it. So, when I'm unusually bitchy tomorrow morning, I'm blaming SansPoint.

And possibly Sarah Palin.
posted by jacquilynne at 10:51 AM on July 16 [5 favorites]

...but that's the thing, the thing everyone is missing, they're not stories.

They're dairies.

Time traveling cows? I've tasted stranger.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 10:51 AM on July 16 [8 favorites]

Stand on Zanzibar/Timscape?
posted by sciurus at 10:51 AM on July 16 [1 favorite]

Really though, how long would it take a large pod of melted whales to float from North Korea's coast up to Alaska? Anyone else been testing weapons-n-stuff lately?
posted by rahnefan at 10:52 AM on July 16

Ye gods, it's Hastur. Cthulu can't be far behind... This will not end well.
posted by MrBobaFett at 10:55 AM on July 16

...but that's the thing, the thing everyone is missing, they're not stories.

They're dairies.

Udderly terrifying! (sorry)
posted by Magnakai at 10:56 AM on July 16 [2 favorites]

Hey Mods:

I'm still waiting for that 3-second edit feature, kthxbye.
posted by The Whelk at 10:57 AM on July 16 [5 favorites]

To be clear, it's only the Hillstrand brothers that can save us. Phil's health just isn't up to fighting interdimensional sludge anymore and his kids' hearts arn't really in it. Sig would take one look at it, finally snap, and become the High Priest of the Goop (Edgar would be its Herald). And Keith's response would be to yell at his brother, burst into tears, shout, fire a greenhorn, yell at his brother some more, hire a greenhorn, and then maybe get around to doing something about the Goop, but by then it would be too late.

No, for true Goop Fighting Efficiency, you need the Hillstrands, 20 bucks, and a case of beer.*

* And also probably some more of whatever the hell Andy's on, just to be safe.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 11:00 AM on July 16 [6 favorites]

Paging Miyazaki, paging Miyazaki, your films have come to life...
posted by Salvor Hardin at 11:02 AM on July 16 [1 favorite]

i bet it's oil.
posted by sexyrobot at 11:09 AM on July 16

But will it eat Canadians?
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 11:13 AM on July 16 [1 favorite]

They're dairies. Half-faded memories of the future.

Um, because cows will go extinct in 100 years?
posted by dlugoczaj at 11:14 AM on July 16

I, for one, welcome our ....

I am so sorry.
posted by JeffK at 11:15 AM on July 16

Viral ad for the next season of Doctor Who, right?
posted by jbickers at 11:21 AM on July 16 [1 favorite]

Kraken poop.
posted by notashroom at 11:21 AM on July 16

Results may be back sometime next week, he said.

Isn't there some kind of overnight emergency service they can use? Can you pay extra for that?

Sometime next week. The entire human population will be slimed sometime next week.
posted by naju at 11:22 AM on July 16 [4 favorites]

The entire human population will be slimed sometime next week.


Happy 10th Anniversary Metafilter!
posted by The Whelk at 11:24 AM on July 16 [1 favorite]

It sounds exactly like the stuff I pull out of my bathtub drain once in a while. All that hairy bathtub gunk turned out to be intelligent and has met up in the ocean.
posted by Simon Barclay at 11:25 AM on July 16

Oh you're all crazy with your inane and inaccurate theories here.

Clearly, and logically, it's a pool of rapidly evolving nanomachines. The grey black goo is here to claim us all.
posted by caution live frogs at 11:35 AM on July 16 [1 favorite]

Great Cthulhu, people! Fifty-four comments in and no one has made a shoggoth joke yet? I'm sad and disappointed.
posted by Caduceus at 11:39 AM on July 16 [1 favorite]

Next, from SyFy!

MMPORG: Massively Multicolored Protozoic ORGanism

They'd be more likely to name it something that might appeal to the masses on SyFy Soporific Saturdays:

BLOBOSAUR!
or
CLOGZILLA!
or
THE GOO!
posted by zarq at 11:40 AM on July 16

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

Sounds like it's most likely an algae bloom, but it would have been nice if he'd mentioned any of the other possibilities specifically.
posted by albrecht at 11:47 AM on July 16

Everybody keep an eye on Peter Parker over the next few weeks. If he starts dancing, run.
posted by hifiparasol at 11:48 AM on July 16 [1 favorite]

It's maybe some kind of virus? Viral entity? Viral entity connected with a new soft drink/action thriller/sandwich?

Did we ever find out what the last weird organism, the "tiny pulsing horrors in the pipes", was? Maybe this is its momma?

Anyway, let's hope it's not The Thing. Although if it's The Thing, we can just briskly walk away from it.
posted by Mister_A at 11:52 AM on July 16 [2 favorites]

And here I thought that all of the shoggoths were pent up in Antarctica . . .
posted by anansi at 11:52 AM on July 16

If you click the image, there's a slideshow with another picture of the gunk in a white bucket. Looks like algae to me. That wouldn't make for a very interesting article though.
posted by diogenes at 11:53 AM on July 16

You know, it worries me that any time any sort of biological material shows up that isn't a kitten/dolphin/unicorn everyone FREAKS THE HELL OUT. I don't particularly have a massive marine biology knowledge bank, but that looks very much like the algae I've been pulling out of fish tanks for years. Admittedly on a larger scale. Same thing with that ball of sewer worms that was floating around a while back.
posted by Jilder at 11:54 AM on July 16

"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."

Which might lead one to infer that the Lovecraftian flesh-eating goo stripped the meat off the goose, but the article doesn't actually say that. It doesn't even say that this "someone" reported any connection between the goose carcass and the goo.
posted by paulg at 11:59 AM on July 16 [2 favorites]

I'm grabbing my video camera and heading up to Alaska. If I get there in time, look for Godzilla vs Hedorah II, coming to a theater near you.
posted by JauntyFedora at 12:01 PM on July 16 [1 favorite]

The only thing we know for certain at this point is that we should definitely panic.
posted by clockzero at 12:03 PM on July 16 [2 favorites]

p.s. Hedorah vs. Shedorah -- The Copulating
posted by clockzero at 12:05 PM on July 16 [1 favorite]

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.

What does this bureaucrat think, the black blob may ask for a zoning variance?
posted by digsrus at 12:11 PM on July 16

First they came for the Alaskans, and I said nothing because I was not an Alaskan.
Then they came for the Californians, and I said nothing because even though my boyfriend was a Californian I was not a Californian.
Then they came all the way across the country for the Louisianans, and we scared the fuckers off with our food.
posted by Night_owl at 12:13 PM on July 16 [5 favorites]

Alaska's crapping black goo! Somebody call Joe The Plumber!
posted by jamstigator at 12:20 PM on July 16

HAHA IT'S GROSS AND ALSO POLITICS!
posted by katillathehun at 12:27 PM on July 16 [4 favorites]

Jilder, a kitten/dolphin/unicorn would totally freak my shit out.
posted by everichon at 12:28 PM on July 16 [6 favorites]

It would probably turn out to be a rapist with poor spelling that farted rainbows.
posted by Jilder at 12:47 PM on July 16 [1 favorite]

FYI the Raleigh sewer monster thing is most likely tubifex worms.
posted by Rhomboid at 12:53 PM on July 16

Metal.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 12:54 PM on July 16

Color me squick'd. *shudders*
posted by Severian at 1:05 PM on July 16

Primordial spawn released from eons of frozen slumber by the melting of the polar ice cap. Evolution is about to take an unexpected turn.
posted by Thorzdad

That was my very first thought, too, but I laughed it off. Now that you've typed the words, though, I'm... glad I live on the east coast now. On the second floor of a building comfortably distant from the ocean.

I'm kind of hoping it's something semi-malevolent so we can kill it with napalm.
posted by empyrean at 1:08 PM on July 16 [3 favorites]

Metafilter: between the goose carcass and the goo.
posted by CynicalKnight at 1:09 PM on July 16

Steve tells Lt. Dave that the Blob cannot stand cold (explaining why it did not consume them in the refrigerator), and so, taking the fire extinguishers from the local high school, they attack the monster with carbon dioxide. Soon, the Blob is frozen solid, unable to move or engulf anyone. The film closes with a scene of a military plane dropping the Blob into an Arctic landscape. [wikipedia]

posted by benzenedream at 1:23 PM on July 16 [2 favorites]

Perhaps it will adapt to feed on the state-sized pacific plastic patch. Wishful thinking.
posted by anthill at 1:34 PM on July 16 [1 favorite]

What does this bureaucrat think, the black blob may ask for a zoning variance?

"That's one of the reasons we [Gordon Brower and other borough officials from the North Slope Borough's Planning and Community Services Department] 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."

In other words: "We were told there was some new gross stuff floating out there, and we wanted to see, too."

More likely: they'll know something to tell the concerned public, when people call and ask what's floating out there. If nothing else, they can confirm it's not an oil spill. People call planning and community service offices for all sorts of reasons, and it's nice to be able to tell them something instead of sending them to another agency.
posted by filthy light thief at 1:34 PM on July 16

Also: does it make any sound?
posted by filthy light thief at 1:35 PM on July 16

In an alternate universe White House, Sam Lloyd is telling Rob Lowe about this right now, and Rob Lowe is offering him a pen.
posted by tzikeh at 1:59 PM on July 16 [1 favorite]

I bet some giant ocean eddy has been building this stuff up for years and a recent change in currents has just let it loose.
posted by lucidium at 2:23 PM on July 16

The entire human population will be slimed sometime next week.

Well it is Comic Con next week... so that makes more sense than you'd think.
posted by saturnine at 2:25 PM on July 16

Someone beta me to it, but for anyone that has been keeping aquariums, this is nothing to freak out about.

My LFS used to keep a basin full of tubifex worms for sale as live food. The colony was decades old. When I saw the sewer monster, it looked and behaved exactly like that. Turned out that is what it was.

I am betting this one is algae. I have been battling black hair algae in my thanks forever, this looks just like a marine version of it. It could be something else, of course, but 3 minutes under one of those toy microscopes you can buy for $20 shoudl be enough to tell, not one week of sophisticated testing.

If I where at home I could take a picture of the balls of black hair algae in one of my abandoned tanks, here's is what I found on teh google.


Closeup of GREEN hair algae.

Extreme closeup of BLACK hair algae.

The picture shows a tiny bit, but of left alone, this thing will cover everything in the aquarium, chocking every other organism to death. I have pulled fist sized balls of this thing from aquariums, with the rotten remains of plants and fish entangled in it.
posted by dirty lies at 2:29 PM on July 16 [3 favorites]

BTW, I use 'algae' the way amateur aquarists do. Many of the nasty hairy black or dark green 'algae' is actually cyanobacteria.
posted by dirty lies at 2:31 PM on July 16

I suck at posting today, clicked post too soon, sorry.

Here is a picture of floating cyanobacteria.
Here is some hair like cyanobacteria from singapore.

What does it remind you of?
posted by dirty lies at 2:34 PM on July 16 [1 favorite]

Apparently, the payments stopped arriving for the storage of Michael Jackson's pigmentation shortly after his death.
posted by flarbuse at 2:41 PM on July 16

"Up there I'm Bleek, in more ways than one. But down here, I'm the Phantom of the Sewer, lover."
posted by mr_crash_davis mark II: Jazz Odyssey at 2:52 PM on July 16

As long as it's only a 15-mile patch of cyanobacteria that is growing like crazy will choke every living thing in its path, I guess we're okay.
posted by snofoam at 2:52 PM on July 16 [1 favorite]

crazy and will
posted by snofoam at 2:53 PM on July 16

cyanobacteria
posted by nonspecialist at 3:27 PM on July 16

Don't they get algal blooms in the gulf all the time?
posted by GuyZero at 3:29 PM on July 16

Where's Jamie Zawinski's "Grim Meathook Future" tag when you need it?

And yes, The Raft is the first thing I thought of.
posted by rodgerd at 3:54 PM on July 16

Being that the area is an active quake, volcanic subduction zone, you'd be surprised what is squeezed out of the rock - likely is crude oil or a relative, like Aunt Crude (~;
posted by vvurdsmyth at 3:59 PM on July 16

So, the ex-wife is swimming again. Let me tell you, thank the stars she's in a one piece this time.
posted by Samizdata at 4:53 PM on July 16

Pepsi Blue Xoo Black
posted by aaronetc at 6:40 PM on July 16 [1 favorite]

It does look like filamentous algae in the second photo. A lot of old sea ice melted this year and filamentous algae grows on sea ice so that's my guess.

That or aliens.
posted by fshgrl at 7:45 PM on July 16

I was in town on Sunday when this slick was first reported in Barrow by hunters bringing their boats ashore after a long day on the water and ice. People said it was pinkish, but also black, iridescent, etc. Several dead birds were found fouled with the goo. No one in the community has seen anything like it before, and the reports as of Sunday (when it first became known in Barrow and Wainwright) it stretched over 100 miles along the coast hugging the inner edge of the sea ice. Indeed, I believe I also sent the first reports of it to the major news agencies, and was the first to alert to the ADN reporter whose story is linked in the FPP. So this story is personal for me.

Whatever it is, it isn't common; and the people who assure me of this know that ocean intimately. I'm watching the situation as closely as I can from too far away now (I left Monday). We'll know soon enough, but all mordant joking aside, since we don't know what it is, let's *hope* it is natural and innocuous. A lot of people subsist from those waters and this is the peak season for sea hunting there. If this substance is toxic, it's possibly been ingested by hundreds of people this week (myself included) given the extent of the slick. Red tide would be the most innocuous explanation, but that is not known in this region. Plenty of (mostly treated) sewage goes into the Chukchi at several points along the coast, but the water is pretty damn cold.

I'll say that a lot of Native sea hunters aren't so sure it's a normal natural phenomenon.

The Arctic is in deep, deep trouble, whatever this is.
posted by fourcheesemac at 7:46 PM on July 16 [13 favorites]

It looks pretty clear to me that it's algae. Of course, when I get an algae bloom that bad in my aquarium, it means I fucked up royal...
posted by dirigibleman at 8:03 PM on July 16

Speaking of time traveling refugees (we were, weren't we?) I recommend the short story "Radiant Doors," by Michael Swanwick, which you can read here.

Excerpt:

The doors began opening on a Tuesday in early March. Only a few at first—flickering and uncertain because they were operating at the extreme end of their temporal range— and those few from the earliest days of the exodus, releasing fugitives who were unstarved and healthy, the privileged scientists and technicians who had created or appropriated the devices that made their escape possible. We processed about a hundred a week, in comfortable isolation and relative secrecy. There were videocams taping everything, and our own best people madly scribbling notes and holding seminars and teleconferences where they debated the revelations.

Those were, in retrospect, the good old days.

In April the floodgates swung wide. Radiant doors opened everywhere, disgorging torrents of ragged and fearful refugees. There were millions of them and they had every one, to the least and smallest child, been horribly, horribly abused. The stories they told were enough to sicken anyone. I know.

We did what we could. We set up camps. We dug latrines. We ladled out soup. It was a terrible financial burden to the host governments, but what else could they do? The refugees were our descendants. In a very real sense, they were our children.

Throughout that spring and summer, the flow of refugees continued to grow. As the cumulative worldwide total ran up into the tens of millions, the authorities were beginning to panic—was this going to go on forever, a plague of human locusts that would double and triple and quadruple the population, overrunning the land and devouring all the food? What measures might we be forced to take if this kept up? The planet was within a lifetime of its loading capacity as it was. It couldn't take much more. Then in August the doors simply ceased. Somebody up in the future had put an absolute and final end to them.

It didn't bear thinking what became of those who hadn't made it through.
posted by Rhaomi at 8:17 PM on July 16 [2 favorites]

Don't they get algal blooms in the gulf all the time?

Yes, it's what causes oxygen dead zones, the algae use up all the O - in the Gulf it's caused by too much nitrogen from fertilizer washing down the Mississippi mostly.
posted by stbalbach at 10:51 PM on July 16

In other news - glowing clouds seen across America likely the result of climate change. I am really hoping these two articles are a part of some ARG for that Aztec end of world movie.
posted by phyrewerx at 11:04 PM on July 16 [2 favorites]

Came here to say "The Raft." Of course, beaten to the punch by hours. Go Metafilter!
posted by uncanny hengeman at 11:06 PM on July 16

So fourcheesemac, has anybody just put a slide of it under a microscope, even a school microscope, yet? I was kind of surprised something like that wasn't in the news reports if it's being collected by the bucket.
posted by XMLicious at 12:55 AM on July 17

"I have been researching "blogs" like this, albeit smaller, for the last 15 years. One thing that my research shows is that there is usually a "meteor" involved. The current theory that this is some sort of a biological probe. The "probe" explores our oceans and reports back using bioluminescence in a light spectrum that is above the UV range. The fact that previous ones were small and this one so large alarms me. Previous ones I investigated appeared in tropical waters and in large fresh water bodies and were no larger than 200 meters long by 50 meters wide. This one might be have another purpose than research, I hope I am wrong."

This is from the first poster below the article. The crazy like a fox scientist has spoken. If my disaster movie memory serves me right if we can ignore him until all seems lost then take his advice for some hair brained idea we will be alright. Just in case though... Me/racks 12 gauge and goes to make some Molotovs.
posted by Mastercheddaar at 7:04 AM on July 17 [1 favorite]

It looks pretty clear to me that it's algae. Of course, when I get an algae bloom that bad in my aquarium, it means I fucked up royal...
posted by dirigibleman at 8:03 PM on July 16 [+] [!]

Sarah Palin!!! TADA! Sorry I couldn't resist.
posted by Mastercheddaar at 7:08 AM on July 17

This always happens. Something very strange is found and speculation runs rampant.

Remember the mobile biological weapons lab back in 2003? Everyone heard about it, but did anyone hear the less-publicized followup:

After some general ridicule of France, Democrats and peaceniks in San Francisco, Fox co-host Alan Colmes was allowed to counter, "I think they've decided it is not a weapons of mass destruction mobile lab."

So, here's this fascinating black goo that could be a monstrous creature from the deep or whatever, but did anyone bother to followup:

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

People are so scared of the unknown, of what the blob could be, that we tend to forget that the reality (more manifestations of changes in climate) is the most horrifying thing of all.
posted by infinitefloatingbrains at 11:52 AM on July 17 [5 favorites]

A giant blob of algae in a place where no such blob has ever been seen before. In the cold Arctic, that's melting. And that's supposed to mean no worries?
posted by Goofyy at 12:06 PM on July 17 [1 favorite]

I'm now more terrified that a giant blob of marine algae could have melted off of a glacier or bloomed because the water is a bit warmer.
posted by crataegus at 6:29 PM on July 17

Meanwhile in Maine this week:

"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."

posted by stbalbach at 10:01 AM on July 19