back to article Mysterious organic blobs found in Alaskan waters

Enormous blobs of thick, black, gooey biological material have been spotted drifting in the waters off Alaska's northern coast, and nobody is quite sure what they are. Alaskan hunters first noticed the ooze early last week drifting miles offshore in the frigid arctic waters of the Chuckchi Sea, according to Anchorage Daily …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Cliff

    Closer than you think...

    The other week I pulled apart the U-bend for our blocked kitchen sink, the goo I found matched this description and was certainly icky enough to kill a goose. Not recalling having ever poured a foul grey goo down the sink, I can only imagine it crawled up the drains, now I know where the master culture that spawned it is!

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Sorry...

    My bad... Dodgy curry the other week.

    Mine's the one with the Andrex in the pocket.

  3. Ben Mathews

    Eeek

    I for one welcome our thick, black, gooey biological material overlords.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Megaphone

    Aftermath of a strong curry?

    I have seen that before!

  5. LaeMi Qian
    Welcome

    Welcome

    to our jelly-dish and goose eating visitors from the depths!

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hold on...

    15 fcuking miles long???? This thing's got a starring role in a future Michael Bay movie!

    'Gordon Brower with the North Slope Borough's Planning and Community Services Department told the paper he saw some jellyfish tangled up in the goo and someone else retrieved bones and feathers from a dead goose.'

    This thing's carnivorous???

    We are so boned...

    ...on the upside it might be the only thing to save us all from Lewis' refrigerator-sized immortal jellyfish (El Reg passim).

    I wonder how it handles Humvee sized Arctic spiders???

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sarah Palin

    So this is why she resigned so suddenly!!!!

  8. Jonathan McColl

    Here we go ...

    "The mystery goo is blackish-brown, has hairy strands in it, and gives off an unusual odor"

    Sounds like something bad has happened to Seattle's sewage and it's been let out untreated.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    I am thinking...

    ...that a bunch of Blue Whales had a plankton vindaloo last night for dinner...

  10. spfolly

    X Files

    Somebody tell Mulder - the black oil is really here!

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Whale spunk..

    Nuff said.

  12. Nate Phillips
    FAIL

    Small town in Pennsylvania?

    Erm...either Mr. Modine doesn't know his American geography, or this is one damn stupid alien.

    Unless it likes to swim, and fancies a visit to Cape Horn.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    Ah yes, always good for double standards...

    Everyone loves to bash the Japs over whaling right? It's so easy... the heartless bastards!

    But what other famous, large, wealthy nation still allows whaling? OH! Of course! The US-we-run-the-world-A! USA! USA! USA! Kill those goddam whales! Yeehaaaw!

    Funny how no-one mentions them... but they claim it's traditional! So it's OK! Like cannibals - it's traditional that they eat people, so that makes it OK! Yessirree! It's A-OK if it's traditional! Shootin' whales, as traditional as apple pie, handguns for kids and disenfranchising native populations.

  14. Graham Marsden
    Alert

    Ph'nglui mglw'nafh...

    ... Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtan!

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    @AC 23:49

    They said it stank, not that it tasted sweet.

  16. Brendan Murphy

    Mmmm...

    Free goo

  17. Lupus
    Go

    Obligatory...

    Cthulhu fhtagn!

  18. Jacob Reid
    Welcome

    Aliens. Must be aliens.

    The invasion has begun.

    I , for one, welcome our new alien overlords.

    (finally, a chance to use this icon...)

  19. Moss Icely Spaceport
    Thumb Up

    Space Blob!

    I reckon it's making it's way to Japan to star in a new disaster movie!

    Blobzilla Vs Mothra!

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Headmaster

    Mandleson coral initiative mutates

    New Labour marine policy inspired by Sarah Palin's ambition.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The end of the world...

    I hypothesise that as sea temperatures rise, organisms that live deep undersea are forced out of their natural habitats and rise to the surface. I put this down to Globull Warming (c) and can offer consulting services on how to avoid gooey, hairy substances in Alaska. Go to Arizona instead.

  22. Jason 29
    Paris Hilton

    Unassigned Goo

    Perhaps Simon Cowell should Sign it up - alwaysmake money out of a pile of goo..

  23. Ben 31

    Obvious culprit

    So let me get this right: First Sarah Palin announces the end of her political career and disappears, then a strange black blob starts menacing small-town Alaska.

    I think we've all seen enough movies to work out where this one is going...

  24. Tony S
    Alien

    Evolution

    Just need 500 bottles of Head & Shoulders, and make sure that the military don't try to burn it up with napalm.

  25. Kibble
    Alien

    I wanna know...

    Were there no reports of meteors landing in the waters off Alaska lately?

  26. Colin Barfoot
    Happy

    I'm intrigued...

    as to what the hunters and whalers concerns were.

    WHALE: If you hunt me down I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.

    WHALER#1: Arghh, ye talking cetacean. Your fishy threats don't frighten us. Fire!

    WHALE: Urghhh! Right, well you asked for it. You'll be visited by the ghost of whaling past: a terrifying amorphous blob of a creature that strips men of their flesh and spits out their bones on the beach.

    WHALER#1: If I had a piece of eight for every time some whale said that I'd be a rich whaler.

    WHALE: Urghhh!

    WHALER#1: That's him done, lads. Did anyone pack the big hawsers?

    WHALER#2: errrr....

    WHALER#3: oh....

    WHALER#1: Shiver my timbers, we'll have to go back and get them.

  27. imposter
    Alert

    Tony S

    You can deliver the enema

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Big Brother

    Is it Gordo Goo Brown?

    "The mystery New Labour goo is blackish-brown, has hairy strands in it, and gives off an unusual Scottish odor"

    This does sound like what happened to Gordon Brown after being told he could not get rid of his Darling "Darling"

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Swine flu..

    Well all that snot from the sneezing has to go somewhere....

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Does it burn?

    ...biofuel... ?

  31. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Darkest Imaginings

    For years we've been ignoring amanfromMars, thinking that it was all gibberish that he spouted. It wasn't. I have been studying the writings of the mad Arab and have come to a conclusion about amanfromMars.

    His ramblings have been induced by the partial awakening of Great Cthulu from within the depths of the Pacific.

    Soon we well begin to see the harbingers of Cthulu's awakening. First thing he's likely to do when he awakens is go for a whizz and my guess is that this will take the form of a foul-smelling black goo. Cthulu's also quite a large guy and has been sleeping for aeons, so I wouldn't be surprised if there was miles and miles of it...

  32. lukewarmdog
    Pirate

    Female of some species

    "It's definitely, by the smell and the makeup"

    Let's not make it mad, we wont like it if we make it mad.

  33. martyn 3
    Alert

    Creepshow anyone?

    Stephen Kings story 'The Raft' - a sentient carnivorous floating patch of ooze.

  34. Scott Broukell
    Joke

    Ship load of ...

    cheap imported jellied eels and pork scratchin's, wot was destined for the finest gafs in lovely old London tahn, init.

  35. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Might I be the first to say...

    I for one welcome our new gloopy hairy blob overlords.

    It's probably just rotten whale spunk or something, or swine flu, is it swine flu?

  36. Glen 9

    Dammit

    I was hoping it to be an alien from outer space gorging on small towns.

    Maybe its that thing from Evolution or Venom from Spiderman.

    Someone's already mentioned Palin running away from it. Maybe she knows something we don't.

    The more conspiracy theories the better I say.

    In the mean time... I surrender the earth to our sludgy new overloads and as ambassador to the earth, I want all of Europe and half of Australia and the right to not be eaten.

    Sign Here Please ________________________

  37. Anonymous Coward
    Alien

    Sounds a bit Wellsian...

    "Wherever there was a stream the red weed clung and grew with frightening voraciousness, its claw-like fronds choking the movement of the water. And then it began to creep like a slimy red animal across the land covering field and ditch and tree and hedgerow with living scarlet feelers, crawling, crawling."

    ULLA!

  38. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    @ AC 00:50 GMT

    Might I be so bold to ask how you discovered what whale-spunk tastes like?

    On second thoughts - I don't think I really want to know...

  39. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @AC - 00:40

    There's a big difference between using whaling factory ships and taking the creatures to near extinction, and hunting them in jumped up kayaks with a little more than a whaling cap-gun.

    Man is a predator species, we kill things to live. Unfortunately man is also a greedy, self-centred bastard and forgets that if we kill everything today, we have nothing to eat tomorrow.

    Now either you are a fundamentalist vegan who only wear fair-trade organic hemp, or you are a hypocrite; which is it?

  40. capcomms
    Happy

    Pennsylvania

    @Nate Phillips: I think that was a reference for the 1958 Steve McQueen film 'The Blob', which was based in PA.

  41. Sarah Bee (Written by Reg staff)

    Re: @AC - 00:40

    Nobody's views can be 100% consistent. Everyone's a hypocrite. It's a meaningless and toothless accusation.

    As you were.

  42. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It all starts in the sea...

    Chtorrrrr!!!!!!!

  43. g e

    @AC 11:16

    What a choice.

    If it were me I'd choose hypocrite every time. You could even throw in baby-eater and no-win-no-fee lawyer and I'd not mind compared to the alternative...

  44. Peyton

    @AC 11:16

    If you're going to respond to trolling, it's usually best to stick with facts, not philosophy. For the record, the *International* Whaling Commission allows aboriginal whaling; primarily they target commercial whaling for control. Alaska is not the only place aboriginal whaling occurs - aside from other northern climes, peoples in the tropics hunt whales for food as well. Incidentally, the notorious (and ironically named?) Steve Irwin's crew members are from "Australia, America, Canada, United Kingdom, South Africa, Sweden, Bermuda, Germany, the Netherlands, Hungary, New Zealand and Japan."

  45. Alain Moran

    Primordial Slime

    Could this be a sample of the primordial slime from which we all came (except the christians of course) that has defrosted out of the arctic ice?

  46. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Sarah Bee et al

    No one responded with "false dichotomy"? Disappointing.

  47. Luther Blissett

    Whale oil beef hooked

    Hardly.

    (OK Caption. How about: "US Navy discovers active sonar more effective than previously thought").

  48. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    re: martyn 3 - The Raft.

    Yes!

    Thanks for reminding me of that brilliant short story.

    It might just be me remembering through the rosy tint of nostalgia, but it was one of (if not) the best short story he wrote!

    Cheers!

  49. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    It's not whale stuff

    they wouldn't be caught dead with that coming out of them.

    oh, wait.....

  50. Stevie

    Bah!

    Fools! Clearly this is all that remains of a secret Alaskan Government-run deepwater submerged "shoggoth" training facility after the containment failed and the auto-destruct was activated. No wonder the governor resigned.

    These meddling Alaskans will bring down upon us a doom not unlike that which visited Sarnath. No doubt Vice President Cheney decided that Congress shouldn't be briefed on this contra-terrene research and development project. I wonder how many of the former "inner circle" have had Elder Signs tattooed on them at taxpayer expense?

    Write your congressman now. No more secret underwater shoggoth research!

  51. Mike Moyle

    @ AC 0:40

    "...as traditional as apple pie, handguns for kids and disenfranchising native populations."

    Waitaminnit... If we were disenfranchising the native population, we wouldn't LET them go on their traditional whale hunts.

    So either you WANT us to disenfranchise them or you want us to to let them go out and hunt; I'm not sure that you can have both at once.

  52. Anonymous Coward
    Go

    My advice

    First, we have to look for evidence of illicit toxic waste dumping or nuclear testing in the waters off Alaska. Then its time to start watching the news for reports of fishing vessels and yuppie sailing parties going missing, local lighthouses being toppled and isolated coastal villages being mysteriously flattened!

    Be afraid! Be very afraid!! Especially if the trail of missing boats and ravaged seaside communities starts moving from Alaska towards Tokyo!!

  53. BoldMan
    Alien

    Just to emphasise

    Let me repeat...

    Cthulhu fhtagn!

  54. skeptical i

    Palin's political career? Found it!

    Recall the milk cartons.

This topic is closed for new posts.