Mystery of orange goo gripping Alaska town has been partially solved

August 10, 2011 By Derek Mead

Scientists finally think they have an idea where the orange goo turning up in Alaskan waterways is coming from.

Maybe this sounds familiar: one day an isolated Insupiat Eskimo village in northwestern Alaska is plugging along like everything’s fine. Then, out of nowhere, the town is attacked by a horrifying orange goo washing up from the ocean.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t quite that dramatic, but it did indeed happen. Kivalina, a town of 425 that sits on Alaska’s coast 625 miles from Anchorage, flashed into the national spotlight a few days ago when reports came of a mysterious orange substance covering Kivalina’s beaches.

The slimy growth appeared anywhere there was water, including the town’s lagoon and isolated areas like rain buckets. Initially, no one was sure of what the substance could be, although given Alaska’s history with oil spills, the Coast Guard was quick to rule out it being a manmade substance.

Today the mystery has been at least partially solved. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminstration threw samples of the goo under a microscope and it turned out to an aggregation of millions of tiny little eggs. NOAA officials said the eggs have little oily deposits inside, which may have helped them float and stick together.

Outside of that, goo questions abound. First, no one is sure whose eggs they are, although the current best guess is they came from crustaceans. Ongoing studies should solve that riddle relatively quickly.

More worrisome for the residents of Kivalina are the residual effects the egg swarm will have. It’s unclear whether or not the eggs could be harmful to marine life, which the town subsists on. Furthermore, lest anyone think to market a new type of bubble tea, no one is sure if drinking water can be contaminated by the eggs, or how harmful they might be. Finally, as the eggs dry they turn into a fine, aerosol powder, which could cause all kinds of problem for land-faring wildlife as well as Kivalina’s residents.

Photo via the NOAA

Showing 15 comments

Jayme Holman at 7:16pm 10th August 2011 They're here.....
Damon Schmitt at 7:09pm 10th August 2011 "Finally, as the eggs dry they turn into a fine, aerosol powder, which could cause all kinds of problem for land-faring wildlife as well as Kivalina’s residents."And, the alien invasion has begun.
Mondbasis Alphaeins at 5:52pm 10th August 2011 looks like in a sci-fi movie… but it's real…
Butters Stotch at 10:44am 10th August 2011 Are these things going to give birth to millions of little aliens that will take over the earth? Sarah Palin better head back to Alaska and grab her guns, haha.
Arthur E Levinson at 4:52pm 10th August 2011 Tang.
Edmund Zhou at 4:36pm 10th August 2011 Sushi
Dan Gaul at 9:32am 10th August 2011 Very strange that they don't what type of eggs they are. You would think that if it were normal for the eggs to float and be clumped together that they would have seen them before.
1. andrew at 9:37am 10th August 2011 Yeah, exactly. This seems like a pretty big event for this to be the very first time that it happened. Rabpture by mysterious sea eggs? lol
  1. Mike Dunn at 10:38am 10th August 2011 I for one welcome our future crustaceans overlords, and hope they will show mercy on me.
    Dan Gaul at 2:02pm 10th August 2011 Hahaha.
Bob Mulholland at 4:25pm 10th August 2011 Grab your chopsticks! It's time to eat masago!
Brandon Mapes at 9:24am 10th August 2011 MIKE DUNN, the article states that the eggs can be aerosolized when dry. They were likely dried out on the shore, were picked up by the wind, and finally some landed in the rain buckets where they were subsequently rehydrated.
Michael Durwin at 4:12pm 10th August 2011 alien eggs right?
Mike Dunn at 8:25am 10th August 2011 Sounds like we will be having a good crab season this year? The random egg thing doesn't really explain how the eggs got into rain buckets.
1. Brandon Mapes at 9:28am 10th August 2011 The article states that the eggs can be aerosolized when dry. Some of the eggs likely dried up on the shore, were picked up by the wind, and finally some landed in the rain buckets where they were subsequently rehydrated.