Experts Baffled by Unidentified Black Goo Floating in Arctic Ocean

Vermin will know.

Ocean-going slime mould?

Maybe it's extraterrestrial Black Oil ..... .

Why is Wikipedia publishing "trash" articles like this? Let's keep it to scientific things, please!

As for the black goo, has nobody though of an oil slick? What's to be baffled about?

Sounds like The Blob, doesn't it? Curious.

Article implies it is a new thing.

"Experts baffled" - hogwash. They say it's an organism of some kind, but an expert in organisms would check it out in a microscope and tell you right away what kind of organism it is: plant, plankton, bacteria, slime mould, whatever.

Sounds to me like the "expert" is "some guy who can recognize oil" and expertly tells by sniffing and gazing at slime in a bucket, this don't seem to be it.

my bad my septic line broke...

I've seen similar substances while fishing in fresh water just after thaw out.

Hairlike and stinky. They know what it is, they just dont want to put out the word that the entire arctic is about to become that.......

GA, and thanks Ed. Just what I needed to read with my coffee this AM.

Living in the Catskills we want to protect our streams, and NYC wants to protect it's watershed, part of which flows past my deck. When Zebra Mussels first appeared on the scene, flags and flares went up all over. Why not now?

'Rock snot' is something I've seen occasionally, but never paid much attention to. I question whether or not this is being held under wraps in deference to the tourist industry (sorry, I'm a cynic) and how much of that responsibility rests with Trout Unlimited, or any other such organization. Would it be wise for them to advise their members to disinfect their fishing gear?

Since this goo was found on arctic ice, I doubt there is much that can be done to contain it. Bio-engineer something that eats it perhaps. After I googled Didymosphenia geminata, it was apparent that the constant water flows required for propagation were offset by the cloudy conditions we're experiencing here.

Not enough data?

Thanks Ed. I myself haven't learned to blueline links.

Can we eat Didymo?

Of what possible use might this stuff be?

Possibly we ought to scoop it up and do something with it.

Is one of us to become The Algae Blob Magnate?

Stranger things have happened.

In some places for some periods of time, there has actually been Peace on Earth.

When best, and most general, I am not sure, but it would be interesting to know.

The '50s in the US were pretty good from what I can tell, though I am influenced by how much modern dentistry lowered painful events.

I have also heard that Californian Indian Tribes in the Redway Forest Area coexisted with great levels of Peace because Salmon was plentiful in the streams, and conflicts over food did not arise.

Apparently these peaceful people were wiped out by the Westward expansion.

I have drifted off topic, though my wonder is, could this stuff be used by us for something useful? We didn't know how to do much with oil for a good long time.

P.S. I am wavering over whether or not to mark this as off topic, and I'll in this case leave to the crew.

It's an UFO: an "unidentified floating object".