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Scientists have identified an orange-colored gunk that appeared along the shore of a remote Alaska village as millions of microscopic eggs. But the mystery isn't quite solved. Officials with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said Monday they don't know what species the eggs are -- or if they are toxic. They have sent samples to a laboratory on the East Coast for further analysis. The neon orange goo showed up last week on the surface of the water in Kivalina, an Inupiat Eskimo community located at the tip of an 8-mile (12.8-kilometer) barrier reef on Alaska's northwest coast. Residents live largely off the land, and many are worried about the effect on the local wildlife and plants from a substance never seen there before. Leona Baldwin's husband saw it first last Wednesday; she got on the marine radio to alert others in Kivalina that a strange orange goo was sitting on top of the town's harbor. The news attracted all the
townspeople, anxious to get a gander of the phenomenon that covered much of the harbor and then began washing ashore. The next day it rained, and residents found the orange matter floating on top of the rain buckets they use to collect drinking water. It was also found on one roof, leading them to believe whatever it was, it was airborne, too.
By Friday, the orange substance in the lagoon had dissipated or washed out to sea, and what was left on ground had dried to a powdery substance. Villagers have never seen anything like this before, and elders have never heard any stories passed down from earlier generations about an orange-colored substance coming to town. "This is the first for Kivalina, as far as I know," said 63-year-old Austin Swan, a city council member. Swan helped collect some samples for testing, wading out into the lagoon. "It was really light, a powdery look to it, and it was just floating on there, all bunched up together," he said. "It looked like it could blow away very easily." He said some of the material had a sheen to it, like it was oil. "But I couldn't feel the oil at all, any texture at all." When the material bunched up in the lagoon, it created 10 foot-by-100 foot swaths of glimmering orange. "When the wind came in, it narrowed them to a few feet wide. The color was a bright neon orange,"
said Frances Douglas, a member of the city council. "It pretty much covered the south end of the lagoon in streaks," she said of the attraction, which drew many residents. "Pretty much, everybody was baffled," she said.
2nd report
Scientists have identified an orange-colored gunk that appeared along the shore of a remote Alaska village as millions of microscopic eggs filled with fatty droplets. But the mystery is not quite solved. Officials with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Monday they don't know for sure what species the eggs are, although they believe they are some kind of crustacean eggs or embryos. They also don't know if the eggs are toxic, and that worries many of the 374 residents of Kivalina, an Inupiat Eskimo community located at the tip of an 8-mile barrier reef on Alaska's northwest coast. There's been at least one report of dead minnows found in the lagoon of the village the night the eggs appeared last week. Residents also are worried about the community's dwindling reserves in village water tanks even though the orange mass has dissipated from the lagoon and Wulik River, said city administrator Janet Mitchell. "It seems to be all gone," she
said. "But if they're microscopic eggs, who's to say they're not still in the river?" Scientists also don't know why the unidentified eggs suddenly emerged on the shores of Kivalina last week. Villagers say they've never seen such a phenomenon before.
"We'll probably find some clues, but we'll likely never have a definitive answer on that," NOAA spokeswoman Julie Speegle said. Samples are being sent to a NOAA laboratory in Charleston, S.C., for further analysis. The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation also sent samples Monday to the Institute for Marine Science at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Kivalina residents live largely off the land, and many are worried about the effect on some wildlife and plants from the goo, which turned powdery once it dried -- and probably went airborne. Mitchell said some people went berry picking over the weekend, but couldn't tell if the goo was on the fruit, called salmonberries, which are the same color of the eggs. The caribou are in the region now, but she doesn't believe the migrating animals pose much risk as a food source. The eggs were found on at least one roof and in buckets set all over the village to collect rain water. City Councilwoman Frances
Douglas said the gooey, slimy substance was widely spread in streaks along the Wulik River and the lagoon, which is a half mile wide and six miles long. Orangey water was reported from as far away as the village of Buckland, 150 miles southeast of Kivalina.
Douglas estimated the volume of eggs she could see "in excess of a thousand gallons, easily." The weather last Wednesday, when the bright substance emerged, only intensified the effect, according to Douglas. "We had an overcast sky, so it really, really stood out," she said. "You couldn't miss it for nothing." Even village elders don't recall anything like it, said Douglas, who has lived all her 44 years in Kivalina. She remembers temperatures were colder in her childhood, gradually rising over the years. She wonders if that has anything to do with the invasion of the eggs. "With climate change, anything can happen, I guess," she said. Speegle called the climate change theory "purely speculative."
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yep, indeedy, purely speculative
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