Eeeeeeew! It's like all the whales in the world blew their noses in the same area.
National Geographic Magazine reports these gigantic blobs of some mucus-like substance collecting in the Mediterranean Sea.
And this stuff -- whatever it is -- isn't just a navigational or fishing hazard, but a health hazard too.
Up to 124 miles (200 kilometers) long, the mucilages appear naturally, usually near Mediterranean coasts in summer. The season's warm weather makes seawater more stable, which facilitates the bonding of the organic matter that makes up the blobs (Mediterranean map) ... now, due to warmer temperatures, the mucilages are forming in winter too—and lasting for months ... but the new study found that Mediterranean mucilages harbor bacteria and viruses, including potentially deadly E. coli, Danovaro said. Those pathogens threaten human swimmers as well as fish and other sea creatures, according to the report, published September 16 in the journal PloS One.
You may (or may not) be happy to know it's not snot. Instead, it's a mucilage that starts begins as "marine snow,": clusters of mostly microscopic dead and living organic matter, and some larger dead things. Kind of like the pluff mud that kicks up around Lowcountry estuaries (out-of-towners swear that stuff stinks real bad, but we know better).
Over time, the marine snow picks up other tiny hitchhikers, looking for a meal or safety in numbers, and may grow into a mucilage.
It still sounds like something out of an old Steve McQueen horror flick. Now, if killer tomatoes rise up from the glop, I'm not so sure I want to know about it.
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