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Black goop afloat off Arctic coast identified as algae

July 18, 2009 · Filed Under Current, Lore of the Sea

For the last several weeks an unidentified black mass, referred to variously as a “huge blob of Arctic goo” and the “giant black mystery blob,” has been reported off the coast of Alaska in the Chukchi Sea between Wainwright and Barrow. It is unidentifed no longer. Lab tests have determined that it is marine algae. Experts are still unable to say why there is so much of it or why it is black in color.

“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 Anchorage, 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.

“Had it been petroleum, then we really would have had our work cut out for us,” he said.

That was the initial fear — that an oil spill had appeared in the Chukchi Sea, or maybe the blob was oil bubbling up from a sunken vessel or underwater seam.

The goo didn’t fit any pattern that made it easy to identify from afar, Meggert said. “First of all, it was at the end of the Earth. Pretty hard to get to.

“While we’ve seen some algae bloom from time to time, we really haven’t seen something quite like this.”

The color, in particular, didn’t make sense, he said. You might expect to see green or reddish algae but not this black, viscous gunk. Whitledge, with the university, said one possible explanation is that the algae has partially decomposed into a darker hue.

He looks forward to the university examining the sample too, to identify exactly what kind of algae it is.

It’s worth noting that Alaska Natives in the region reportedly hadn’t seen anything like it before, he said.

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