Cryptic Alaska "blob" is an algae bloom
The mysterious massive "blob" moving through the Arctic Ocean is actually an algae bloom. From Time:
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...Arctic Mystery: Identifying the Great Blob of Alaska (Thanks, Sean Ness!)
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."
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"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."
Please let it be some sort of bioweapon aimed specifically at Sarah Palin.
Please?
"It was a dark and floaty mass..."
Sweet! Bulwer-Lytton, here I come! :D
Did the Alaska blob remind anyone else of Stanislav Lem's 'Solaris', where the primordial soup on the planet of that name never evolves into a more complex-seeming organism, but has evolved into a single, ocean-sized sentient organism?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_%28novel%29
The perfect camouflage for a Russian submarine, as a large blob of algae. Nothing to see here, just algae floating nearby the naval base. Purely natural.
Sounds like it was actually the light from Venus reflected off a pocket of swamp gas. Nothing to see here folks.
LOL. I'm sure it isn't actually a coverup of anything, but it surely does remind me of what the MIB would say if the blob was an alien.
This is what the government wants you to believe - 'algae bloom'. First contact has been made, and they are hiding the Truth from us!
It's not even August so I don't understand the interest in Alaska's slime. We get this all over Alaska. However, a 12 mile blob is impressive. (Cut Alaska's blob in half and it is still bigger than Texas).
It's probably an ancient civilization that lay frozen since the last ice age, freed by global warming, now energized by ultra-conservative values of restoring the Earth to its former state, wherein Man was just tiny, nomadic groups of mammoth hunters.
I wish they said what sort of algae it was, for those of us who are interested in phycology.
Did anyone read the article in last month’s 'make magazine' about a guy who was experimenting with iron filament dumping to create algae blooms. The idea is that iron is the limiting factor in plankton populations and with a relatively small input (like 10 tons) of iron you can seed 1000 tons of plankton. (my numbers are off)
The principle apparently works, and he hopes to use the idea as a useful method of carbon sequestration. Ironically he keeps running into problems with environmental groups, and has 'gone private' so he can operate off the radar. He's not the only one either. The article cites other groups who've performed similar large scale experiments.
I'm not making this up. I there is a connection. But it would be wild if there was. Eco Vigilante`s
I for one welcome our algal overlords.
but srsly, I am neither surprised or shocked about this "development." The only other thing it could have been was some sort of extreme bacterial colony or something like that.
Also, yes, i did read the thing about iron filament guy. Only issue could be that it might sap stuff out of the water till the bloom busts and dies off, leading to bacterial explosion releasing methane and toxifying the water and depleting oxygen, creating deadzones like those seen wherever you've agricultural run off. its a dangerous game to play... wonder how it'll turn out. (though i heard the first trial led to a boom of tiny shrimp that ate up all the growth at once) [success]
Another indication of what we are doing to the planet!