Arctic Goo: Dat New New

Well, it may not be as hip and fresh as Kid Cudi's track Dat New New (pardon the unusual digression, but he is from Ohio...), but a 12-mile slick of arctic goo has hit the streets -- or at least the oceans -- around arctic Alaska. According to The Anchorage Daily News, the goo is organic (not oil, but some kind of organism) and one coast guard official said the following:

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


i-a4ae9be5f8e628ff61019200adb6eba9-arcticgoo.jpg

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One can't help but wonder:

Do Cudi's braggadacio ryhmes operate as a double-entendre for the tenacity required to maintain a healthy and sustainable planet, given all the organic and man-made challenges out there?

Consider, from the DNN track referenced in this post:

"Ainât no stopping me at all/
You'd need a sawed off with maybe a chain-saw."

We'd need even more than that to stop all the goo, be it corporate or organic....

Looks like a thick mass of algae, probably most a red alga, and probably mixed with more than a little filamentous cyanobacteria. Just a WAG...

If they can't figure out what it is, why don't the Goo-gle it?!

Sort of reminds me of this delightful quote from a NYMag article: "A team of biology professors at New York City College of Technology have also studied a curious white goo oozing along the bottom, which turned out to be a mix of bacteria, protozoans, and various contaminants."

Ew. (Article: http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/topic/57886/)

Ever see Creepshow 2? Looks like the blob that killed all those teenagers in the lake!!!

Yep, I Googled it and this is what I found. Scary stuff indeed:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blob

Damn aliens, always trying to sneak onto the planet and cause all sorts of disruptive biological transformations without any regard for human life. The indignity of them. Well, until the 'Ocean Scientists,' arrive at a more sound explanation, I am sticking with the 'Blob' theory...

But can we eat it?

If its Red Alge can we harvest it? It's a floating gold mine!

By Christopher Guerra (not verified) on 19 Jul 2009 #permalink