Lab Confirms Chukchi Sea Blob As Previously Unknown Variety Of Algae - ADN

[hatrack]

A sample of the giant black mystery blob that Wainwright hunters discovered this month floating in the Chukchi Sea has been identified. 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 Palmer, 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.

EDIT

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

[phantom power]

1. giant algae blooms and jellyfish...

I feel like that rings a bell. It's on the tip of my tongue...




Nope. Nope, I was wrong. I can't place it.

[timeforpeace]

4. I was gonna write "rats, I wanted to blame humans" but we still can!

[enlightenment]

2. Great. A gigantic floating hairball.

Now we know what happens to all those hairballs cat owners flush down the loo . . .

[Old and In the Way]

3. A result of the Artic icemelt?

I wonder if this had been anchored in/to sea ice that's recently melted?

[vincna]

5. Are they sure?

I thought the Air Force dropped the Blob in the Arctic about 50 years ago.