Word: blobs
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...eventually dispersed—on the observation deck that day proved more intriguing. The high-heeled woman who took off work to watch the sun at 9 a.m. rushed back, and worked overtime. The little girl who jumped with glee as she faced the receding, glowing-red blob was hurried onto a school bus to sit behind a desk for the next six hours or so. People flowed back onto the escalators—letting themselves be moved instead of moving—to the next destination after destination, always looking forward and never around...
...what was it? An oil slick? Some sort of immense, amorphous organism adrift in some of the planet's most remote waters? Maybe a worrisome sign of global climate change? Or, as folks who followed the blob via the Internet wondered, was it something insidious and perhaps even carnivorous like the man-eating jello from the old Steve McQueen movie that inspired the Alaska phenomenon's nickname? (Read Richard Corliss's review of The Thing, a sci-fi film set in the Arctic...
Test results released on July 16 showed that the blob wasn't oil but a plant - a massive bloom of algae. While that may seem less dangerous, people are still uneasy. It's something the mostly Inupiat Eskimo residents along Alaska's northern coast say they cannot remember seeing before. (See pictures of the Arctic...
While Alaskans may find the algal blob unusual if not frightening, scientists say they 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, says algal outbreaks can and do occur even in icy Arctic waters. It just takes the right combination of nutrients, light and water temperature, she says. "Algae blooms," she says. "It's sort of like a swimming pool that hasn't been cleaned in a while." The blob, Konar says, is a microalgae made up of "billions...
...Alaska, nothing suggests that the Chukchi Sea blob is toxic, though the Coast Guard's Hasenauer says toxicity tests are planned. In any case, virtually no commercial seafood production comes from the waters along Alaska's northern coast, but residents do fish, hunt whales and harvest other animals as part of a traditional subsistence lifestyle. In the meantime, the blob for the most part is staying away from the shoreline and slowly drifting farther away...