Orange Goo Invades Alaskan Village

s31523 writes "When the residents of the Alaskan village of Kivalina woke up last week, the unexpected sight of an orange goo covering the surface of the water was quite alarming. Suspecting a oil spill or some other man-made disaster, the residents worried about the toxicity of the substance. After NOAA investigated, it was found the that goo is an unknown type of microscopic eggs. According to NOAA scientist Keep Rice, 'We now think these are some sort of small crustacean egg or embryo, with a lipid oil droplet in the middle causing the orange color.' More work is needed to identify what the eggs are and what caused them to show up."

Comments

Re:Have to know

[ZaMoose]

Came for the Portal 2 reference. Didn't leave disappointed.

Reports say it's crustacean eggs.

[ultramk]

According to a ton of different reports on Google news, the substance was tested and found to be crustacean eggs of some type.

So crustaceans: crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimp, krill and barnacles. Considering the location and volume, I'm suspecting something like a huge krill spawn that was swept onto the shore by unusual currents, a storm system or the like. As for it being toxic, that's pretty laughable. Toxic crustaceans are very few and far between (one that hasn't been eating toxic algae, and considering these are eggs, they haven't been eating anything).

As far the natives not seeing anything like this before... well it's a big planet. Completely natural, explainable things happen all over the globe every day that haven't happened in that particular spot for hundreds if not thousands of years.

Re:Reports say it's crustacean eggs.

[ultramk]

Golly, you make so many assumptions there I don't know where to start. I have no masters in marine biology, I've just lived by the ocean my whole life. I'm not thousands of miles away, either. One of the reasons that I wasn't overly surprised by this is that every 10-12 years something similar to this happens around here.

Last year it was millions of brown jellyfish all over the shore and in the water, in concentrations that none of the old-timers could ever remember having seen. It was bizarre, and shocking.

Once, back in the mid '80s, there was an unbelievable swarm of pelagic crabs--little red swimming guys about the size of a small crawfish. Nobody in the area had ever seen one before, but now they were covering the beaches up to the high tide mark--some live, some dead--for miles and miles up and down the coast. From a distance it was a thick band of crimson between the water and the rocks or dunes. They were thick in the water too. They've never come back.

Dont get me started on algae blooms.

These things happen. And yes, panicking about it is an overreaction.

Re:Ocean Temperatures

[drolli]

As much as i understand that there is climate change, this type of speculation before analysis is exactly what the world does not need.