Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Land, and I'm Joe McCormick. In Today,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be diving into the ocean to take a
Speaker 1: look at slime, froth, ooze, and mucus of various kinds.
Speaker 1: And I thought maybe a good way to get in
Speaker 1: the mood for this kind of discussion would be to
Speaker 1: do a couple of literary readings, perhaps rob if your game.
Speaker 1: When I was thinking about this topic, something immediately came
Speaker 1: to mind. I remember there was some passage from Walt
Speaker 1: Whitman in which he identified very strongly and emotionally with
Speaker 1: becoming a bit of ooze, froth and debris washing in
Speaker 1: the surf. Do do you mind if I read a
Speaker 1: bit of Walt Whitman here? Yeah, go for it. Okay.
Speaker 1: So this is from his poem that I think the
Speaker 1: title has just taken from the first line, mis called
Speaker 1: as I ebbed with the Ocean of Life. The whole
Speaker 1: poem is too long to read, but I'm just going
Speaker 1: to read for the fourth section here, where he really
Speaker 1: talks about becoming the use ebb ocean of life, The
Speaker 1: flow will return. Cease, not your moaning, you fierce old mother,
Speaker 1: endlessly cry for your castaways. But fear not deny, not me, rustle,
Speaker 1: not up so hoarse and angry against my feet. As
Speaker 1: I touch you or gather from you, I mean tenderly
Speaker 1: by you and all I gather for myself and for
Speaker 1: this phantom, looking down where we lead, and following me
Speaker 1: and mine, me and mine. Loose wind rows, little corpses,
Speaker 1: froth snowy white and bubbles. See from my dead lips,
Speaker 1: the ooze exuding at last, See the prismatic colors, glistening
Speaker 1: and rolling, tufts of straw, sand, fragments buoyed hither from
Speaker 1: many moods, one contradicting another, from the storm, the long calm,
Speaker 1: the darkness, the swell, musing, pondering a breath, a briny tear,
Speaker 1: a dab of liquid or soil up just as much
Speaker 1: out of fathomless workings, fermented and thrown, a limp blossom
Speaker 1: or two, torn just as much over the waves, floating,
Speaker 1: drifted at random, just as much for us that sobbing
Speaker 1: dirge of nature. Just as much whence we come that
Speaker 1: blair of the cloud trumpets, we capricious, brought hither we
Speaker 1: know not WinCE spread out before you. You up there
Speaker 1: walking or sitting, whoever you are, we two lie in
Speaker 1: drifts at your feet. Oh man, Whitman. Uh. Feeling a
Speaker 1: little moody in that one. Yeah, this is weird because
Speaker 1: I mean, Whitman has his his darker moods, but I
Speaker 1: feel like this is definitely one of the more downer
Speaker 1: Whitman moments. A lot of times he finds a way
Speaker 1: to surge back up, but that's the end of the poem.
Speaker 1: It kind of ends on a down note. Though. Weirdly,
Speaker 1: even when Whitman is feeling down, you can still you
Speaker 1: can tell he still has that universal connectedness perspective. He
Speaker 1: still is every molecule of everything in the ocean, even
Speaker 1: all the debris and ooze and froth and sand and trash. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's really good. And uh. And when you
Speaker 1: initially brought this up and I was reading it, I
Speaker 1: was like, oh man, this is this is reminding me
Speaker 1: of something, not that it's reminding me of something specific,
Speaker 1: but just sort of a similar vibe. And it got
Speaker 1: me thinking about h G wells uh uh. It's particularly
Speaker 1: I can't remember if it's when the time traveler goes
Speaker 1: to the very end of time or the very beginning,
Speaker 1: but he encounters kind of like, you know, this this
Speaker 1: sludge like dark world of of slimy life. I don't
Speaker 1: remember either way. Well, he goes towards the end, when
Speaker 1: he goes the farthest in the future, it's when he
Speaker 1: encounters that the world has just crabs. It's like, remember
Speaker 1: those those big like arthropod type creatures. But maybe he
Speaker 1: also goes back in time. Maybe that's working on the
Speaker 1: the old school primordial ooze kind of idea of the
Speaker 1: origins of life. Yeah, And you see this pop up
Speaker 1: in weird fiction of the twentieth century as well, particularly
Speaker 1: in the works of of Clark Ashton Smith, who was
Speaker 1: a writer of weird dark fantasy tales and it was
Speaker 1: also a poet and uh and I believe later in
Speaker 1: life he worked with like sculpture. But but I was
Speaker 1: looking up, like, what was what's a nice slimy ocean
Speaker 1: bit from Clark Ashton Smith? And I found a really
Speaker 1: good one from a story titled The Light from the Pole.
Speaker 1: And I'm not sure when this was written. I don't
Speaker 1: think it was actually published until after his death. But
Speaker 1: I'm just going to read a quick paragraph from this
Speaker 1: if you don't mind, go for it. Through the middle summer,
Speaker 1: the fisher folk who dwelt in wattle huts below the
Speaker 1: tall towers of far Azan went forth daily in their
Speaker 1: coracles of hide and willow, and cast their nets in
Speaker 1: the accustomed manner of their trade. But all that they
Speaker 1: gathered from the sea was dead and withered, as if
Speaker 1: in the blast of great coldness, such as would emanate
Speaker 1: from the trans Arctic ice. And they drew forth from
Speaker 1: their signs. Living monsters as well, such as the eldest captains,
Speaker 1: had never beheld things triple headed and tailed and thinned
Speaker 1: with horror, black shapeless things that turned a liquid foulness
Speaker 1: and ran from the net like a vile i corps,
Speaker 1: or headless shapes like bloated moons with green frozen rays
Speaker 1: about them, or things leprous side and bearded with stiffly
Speaker 1: using slime. It was as if some transdimensional and long
Speaker 1: blocked channel beneath the known familiar seas of Earth had
Speaker 1: opened suddenly into the strange waters of ultra mundane oceans,
Speaker 1: teeming with repulsive and malformed life. Wow, well that goes
Speaker 1: to supernatural dimensions, but at the same time still connects
Speaker 1: very much to the topic we're gonna be talking about today. Yeah. Oh,
Speaker 1: and by the way, if some of you are wanting ultramundane,
Speaker 1: that just sounds like even more mundane than usual. It
Speaker 1: actually means the opposite. Ultra mundane means like from beyond
Speaker 1: the solar system. Oh. I would not have known that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it threw me for your curve at first, because I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: the ultramundane man that must be and that's that's just supermunday,
Speaker 1: but now especially average. But anyway, on these themes of
Speaker 1: slime and mucus, it got me thinking about this question,
Speaker 1: like what does life from the microscopic level to the
Speaker 1: plants and the megafauna all have in common. Well, one
Speaker 1: thing that is common to most life, especially most life
Speaker 1: that lives in the water, is mucus or slime. You know,
Speaker 1: some kind of like slimy substances, viscous, slimy, lubricating kinds
Speaker 1: of substances in the body are really some of the
Speaker 1: keystones of organic life. I was thinking about how, uh,
Speaker 1: there was one time when I was in high school
Speaker 1: and I remember being present for a a sermon that
Speaker 1: was preached on the verse in the Bible about how
Speaker 1: the blood is the life, and the point of the
Speaker 1: sermon was that was that that statement the blood is
Speaker 1: the life in the Bible is scientifically accurate, which, on reflection,
Speaker 1: this kind of a funny claim to make. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess that's true. Like if you remove all the
Speaker 1: blood from something, it doesn't live anymore. Um. But but
Speaker 1: I started thinking about how the slime is the life.
Speaker 1: The mucus is the life because you've got micro organisms
Speaker 1: of course that secrete ouzy mucus like substances called mucilage.
Speaker 1: But you can also find that implants if you break
Speaker 1: a stalk of succulent, it will leak a viscous mucilage too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, we could easily do an entire podcast series,
Speaker 1: if not an entire podcast period on slime because you
Speaker 1: look at that, I mean, you just look at the
Speaker 1: ways the importance of slime and the human body, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: and it's it's it's greatly important. Look at some of
Speaker 1: the very unique creatures that utilize slime so well. Um,
Speaker 1: the hag fish, for example, that we've discussed numerous times
Speaker 1: a true wizard of slime um, a sorcerer of uze
Speaker 1: that that is able to to to utilize this uh,
Speaker 1: this this thick, slimy substance that it that it exudes um,
Speaker 1: you know, so so wonderfully as a self defense mechanism. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the truly amazing thing about the hag fish is
Speaker 1: how much of it it can create and how fast. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another big one is the slime that you encounter as
Speaker 1: the very outer layer of fish in the ocean. You know,
Speaker 1: like this is it's not just something that is on
Speaker 1: their body. It is something of their body, but it
Speaker 1: serves as an outer layer. Um. So you know, when
Speaker 1: you're when you're handling a fish, even if you're catching
Speaker 1: and releasing, if you're disrupting that that outer layer, you're
Speaker 1: disrupting some of the protections afforded to the organism. Now,
Speaker 1: but of course there's plenty of internal use for slime
Speaker 1: and mucus and ooze as well, because if you think
Speaker 1: about inside your body, tons of your organs and surfaces
Speaker 1: and tissues are lined with mucus of various sorts that
Speaker 1: are very important for your body. I mean, you've got
Speaker 1: mucus in your nose, mucus and all kinds all kinds
Speaker 1: of parts, so you But of course, I guess one
Speaker 1: thing we should recognize is that we are speaking kind
Speaker 1: of loosely in a general sense about similar types of
Speaker 1: substances with similar physical properties that are not all necessarily
Speaker 1: the same thing. They're not created by the same by
Speaker 1: a chemical pathways always uh, you know, they come from
Speaker 1: different kinds of life. But in this loose sense, almost
Speaker 1: all life has some kind of slime or or ooz
Speaker 1: or goo or mucus. In common life just kind of
Speaker 1: makes mucus. Yeah, I mean, that's that's really the secret
Speaker 1: of the is right there. But today we wanted to
Speaker 1: look at this question of what happens when the mucus
Speaker 1: gets out of hand, what happens when it becomes a
Speaker 1: plague like mass that is not not merely inside the body,
Speaker 1: not merely on the body, not merely uh, floating around
Speaker 1: in little tiny clumps in the ocean, but when it
Speaker 1: comes to dominate the geography and you can see it
Speaker 1: from airplanes. That's what we're going to talk about today.
Speaker 1: So shout out that I got the idea to talk
Speaker 1: about this today when I came across an article in
Speaker 1: The Atlantic by Sarah Jong called a slimy calamity is
Speaker 1: creeping across the sea. And this article is about an
Speaker 1: organic substance that has been referred to in the scientific
Speaker 1: terature as marine mucilage, but it is more commonly known
Speaker 1: to uh people in the fishing industry and people who
Speaker 1: have encountered it firsthand as things like see snot or
Speaker 1: see saliva. And the article is about how this stuff
Speaker 1: has lately become an absolute plague near the shores of Turkey,
Speaker 1: specifically in a place called the Sea of Marmara, which
Speaker 1: is in northwest Turkey, and it's the body of water
Speaker 1: that connects the A G n C on the west
Speaker 1: to the Black Sea on the on the northeast. And
Speaker 1: so if you have not already read any articles about
Speaker 1: this stuff or seen pictures of it, this one is
Speaker 1: really worth looking up to see with your own eyes.
Speaker 1: In fact, there is an astonishing photo gallery on the
Speaker 1: website of The Atlantic right now. It was posted June
Speaker 1: one called photos Turkey ce snot Disaster. So I'd highly
Speaker 1: recommend checking this out if you can, but we will
Speaker 1: try to describe a few of these images here for
Speaker 1: those of you who can't go look it up right now,
Speaker 1: and Rob, I've got these here for you to look
Speaker 1: at as well. So I pulled a few of them.
Speaker 1: This first one was a photo taken by Mohammed Ennis
Speaker 1: Yielder Rim and it's an aerial photo from June one
Speaker 1: of all these boats in the water off the shore
Speaker 1: of Istanbul. And it looks like they're floating in one
Speaker 1: of those buckets that people used to make tie dye
Speaker 1: t shirts. Except instead of all the colors of the rainbow,
Speaker 1: it's just various hues of off white and tan. It's
Speaker 1: this giant, floating, swirling, starry night of beige slime. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is I think this is a Getty image as well,
Speaker 1: from the Getty website. But it is um it it's
Speaker 1: really beautiful. If not, and if I didn't know what
Speaker 1: it was, I would just assume that this was a
Speaker 1: painting because it looks like some sort of a surreal
Speaker 1: uh you know, oil painted ocean upon which the artist
Speaker 1: has depicted realistic looking um depictions of hips and boats. Well,
Speaker 1: another way I could view it is again, because this
Speaker 1: is from a great distance, it is kind of beautiful.
Speaker 1: It also looks like boats that maybe somehow all became
Speaker 1: beached on a vast stretch of sand. So like if
Speaker 1: like if the ocean retreated and left all these boats
Speaker 1: stranded in the dunes with these drifts and current like
Speaker 1: patterns all swirling around them, and they were just sitting
Speaker 1: in the sand. I I could see that being a
Speaker 1: what this is, But no, they are on the surface
Speaker 1: of the water. And also I worry for them if
Speaker 1: they must start their engines. As we'll get to uh
Speaker 1: a bit later on about about some of the problems
Speaker 1: that the stuff causes for for powered boats. But as
Speaker 1: beautiful as this might look from above, as kind of
Speaker 1: like weirdly, I don't know at that that that boundary
Speaker 1: line between gross and beautiful when you get up close,
Speaker 1: it really does get more just obviously disgusting. So this
Speaker 1: next image is of a diver surfacing from under neath
Speaker 1: a large mat of marine mucilage. This one was taken
Speaker 1: by Sir Haat Kagdas for the Anadolue Agency, which is
Speaker 1: a Turkish state media organization, and according to the caption,
Speaker 1: this person is involved in a marine mucilage cleanup operation
Speaker 1: at a Kata Boston beach, which is also in in
Speaker 1: Istanbul Or off the shore of Istanbul and this is
Speaker 1: from June of twenty one also. But if if you're
Speaker 1: trying to imagine the texture of this stuff up close
Speaker 1: from this image here, it looks kind of like if
Speaker 1: you've ever tried to make beef stock, or like a
Speaker 1: pork raman broth. All of the scum that rises to
Speaker 1: the top of the pot as the impurities are are
Speaker 1: removed at first from the bones and the connecting tissues.
Speaker 1: That that stuff that floats up there, except add into
Speaker 1: that like some wilted toilet paper and alo vera gel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that is a good description um. Another way might
Speaker 1: be to imagine if you've filled a crop pot like
Speaker 1: a pressure cooker with cauliflower and then cooked it way
Speaker 1: too long where you just turned it to mush. Like
Speaker 1: that's what this kind of looks like. Yeah, so up close,
Speaker 1: a lot of the beauty has gone and it becomes
Speaker 1: frankly revolting. But I want to come back on the
Speaker 1: beautiful side because also in this photo gallery they had
Speaker 1: one that's an underwater image, and one of the things
Speaker 1: that came through is I started to read more and
Speaker 1: more about this stuff is how in a lot, in
Speaker 1: some sense, you can't really appreciate what it is unless
Speaker 1: you look at views of it from underwater, because, for example,
Speaker 1: a lot of scientists had been trying to study this
Speaker 1: stuff for years, but we're having trouble because the equipment
Speaker 1: that they used to retrieve samples from the water would
Speaker 1: end up churning it up and shaking it up. That
Speaker 1: would kind of destroy its structure. So to really see
Speaker 1: what form it takes as it's just floating in the
Speaker 1: water column you have, you kind of have to go
Speaker 1: down yourself or see pictures taken from beneath the surface.
Speaker 1: So this one picture was by Sebnim Costcoon, also for
Speaker 1: the Nadolu agency, and uh, it's an underwater photo of
Speaker 1: a diver in the Sea of Marmara near at stand Bull.
Speaker 1: Again from this one's from May. And this one looks
Speaker 1: to me like a scene from a Forbidden Planet type
Speaker 1: vintage sci fi movie. The water is dimly lit but
Speaker 1: extremely green, and the diver has these twin work lamps
Speaker 1: that it looks kind of like, you know, crewman Hicks
Speaker 1: has wandered into an alien spider web. And so there's
Speaker 1: just this translucent matrix of goop enveloping everything spun right
Speaker 1: out of the she lob of the sea. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I guess it drives home. You can't tell, really tough
Speaker 1: on the image how deep the individual is, but yet
Speaker 1: you certainly get the sense that this is not a
Speaker 1: mere merely a surface phenomena. This is something that extends
Speaker 1: at least somewhat into the water column. Right, And we'll
Speaker 1: get into more detail as we go on about how
Speaker 1: that happens. I think they're there are different stages depending
Speaker 1: on the conditions that that cause it to float or
Speaker 1: stay suspended in the water column. Um. But we'll explain
Speaker 1: that as we go on. One last photo I thought
Speaker 1: we should look at before we move on, Rob. Is
Speaker 1: this one of workers trying to vacuum this stuff up
Speaker 1: with hoses? I think this is again nearest stenbul Uh
Speaker 1: in the Marmara. See this is from June uh And
Speaker 1: the stuff here that's going up into the hose looks
Speaker 1: very much like overflow from a sewer clean out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or big cat vomit, A lot of cat vomit. Maybe, oh,
Speaker 1: big cat vomit. You mean, like the vomit is big
Speaker 1: or like from a big cat, like a lion talking.
Speaker 1: I'm talking like big time cat cat vomit here, like
Speaker 1: like cat vomit, so expansive that Peter Gabriel write a
Speaker 1: song about it for real cat vomit. One of the
Speaker 1: articles I was reading about this had a really good
Speaker 1: physical description. It was by Selene Ugertash, writing for the
Speaker 1: The for The Guardian in May one and you. Gurtash
Speaker 1: said that when seen from above, it looks like a
Speaker 1: brush of beige swirled across the dark blue waters of
Speaker 1: the Sea of Marmara. Up close it resembles a creamy,
Speaker 1: gelatinous blanket of Quicksand yeah, so from the air looks
Speaker 1: like a cappuccino ocean, like the surface of a cappuccino.
Speaker 1: Up close, it looks it just looks gross, very grass. Now.
Speaker 1: In that article in The Atlantic by Sarah Jong, she
Speaker 1: talks about different names for the different types of accumulations
Speaker 1: of it. So you've got what's known as marine snow.
Speaker 1: That's a that's a phenomenon that ultimately connects to marine muselage.
Speaker 1: But these are of course tiny little flakes and droplets
Speaker 1: that are usually drifting slowly down towards the sea floor. Uh,
Speaker 1: they're They're found in the ocean all the time, just
Speaker 1: the little flakes little bits of life they're drifting around.
Speaker 1: But then when when the marine muselage starts to accumulate,
Speaker 1: you've got these things called stringers, which she's says resemble
Speaker 1: a kind of sticky goo. This is more actually similar
Speaker 1: in appearance to human nasal mucus. But then you've also
Speaker 1: got clouds, which are maybe more like you know that
Speaker 1: maybe when the stringers come together they form clouds. It's
Speaker 1: more like that giant spider web under the surface of
Speaker 1: the water. Uh. They're they're delicate and they break apart
Speaker 1: when you touch them, but they just form these big,
Speaker 1: sort of translucent white masses floating in the water. So
Speaker 1: I guess we should get more into describing the phenomenon
Speaker 1: of of what's actually happening here. I mentioned that this
Speaker 1: is something that's going on in Turkey right now, specifically
Speaker 1: in the Sea of Marmara, but marine mucilage is a
Speaker 1: broader phenomenon than what's happening in Turkey right now, both
Speaker 1: in terms of time and geography. So the Sea of
Speaker 1: Marmara is not the only place that experiences surges of
Speaker 1: this stuff, and it's not the first time it has happened.
Speaker 1: But the slime infestation at Marmora is especially bad this year,
Speaker 1: and the problem does seemed to be getting worse in
Speaker 1: the region over time. So I found a source illuminating
Speaker 1: this as a scientific paper discussing marine mucilage in the
Speaker 1: Adriatic Sea, which is nearby. It's in the Mediterranean. The
Speaker 1: Adriatic is the stretch of sea between Italy and the Balkans.
Speaker 1: And this is a paper by Roberto den Ovarro, Serena
Speaker 1: Fonda Umani and Antonio pusque Do and it's called Climate
Speaker 1: Change and the Potential Spreading of Marine mucilage and Microbial
Speaker 1: Pathogens in the Mediterranean Sea. This was published in PLS
Speaker 1: one in two thousand nine. This is a highly cited
Speaker 1: paper about marine mucilage. Most of the articles that I
Speaker 1: was reading mentioned this paper at one point or another,
Speaker 1: but in tracking the history of this stuff, they go
Speaker 1: all the way back to the eighteen century the author's
Speaker 1: right quote. Worldwide, the highly productive and shallow Adriatic Sea,
Speaker 1: and particularly it's a northern portion within the Mediterranean Basin,
Speaker 1: is the area most severely affected by the out break
Speaker 1: of massive marine mucilage. Mucilage was reported here for the
Speaker 1: first time in seventeen twenty nine, and was originally described
Speaker 1: as a quote dirty c phenomenon, or in Italian that
Speaker 1: would be mare Sporco, because it causes the clogging of
Speaker 1: fishing nets. Uh. And I do like the name mare Sporko.
Speaker 1: I'm not quite sure why. Maybe because it sounds like
Speaker 1: it has a porky element somehow. It could easily be
Speaker 1: the name of a demon in Dante's Inferno. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: Mari Sporko hanging out with you know, the very with
Speaker 1: the malacoda and all Malo Bronco or I might be
Speaker 1: getting that name wrong. Bronco. Yeah, there's Malacoda in there.
Speaker 1: And of course Scarmiglian, Scarbiglian, lots of good names. So
Speaker 1: what would the dirty sea demon be? I mean, usually
Speaker 1: they're more kind of like animals are personified. This would
Speaker 1: be like the ocean itself is a demon, yeah, or
Speaker 1: just kind of a roughly humanoid form made out of
Speaker 1: this cease, not that we're describing, That's the way I'm
Speaker 1: picturing it. Yeah, So outbreaks of cease not, according to
Speaker 1: the authors of this paper, have been occurring in the
Speaker 1: Adriatic ever since, ever since they were observed, and you know,
Speaker 1: possibly before that too, But it was first documented in
Speaker 1: seventeen twenty nine, and they've been recurring ever since, but
Speaker 1: the frequency has increased sharply in the last thirty years
Speaker 1: or so. And this paper was published in two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: so that would mean since around nineteen eighty. And the
Speaker 1: author is right about how once this stuff aggregates, an
Speaker 1: outbreak of marine mucilage can stay floating on the surface
Speaker 1: or suspended throughout the water column for around two to
Speaker 1: three months, and then after that it tends to float
Speaker 1: down and settle on the sea bottom. And there are
Speaker 1: several reasons why the stuff is considered undesirable by humans.
Speaker 1: Some of them are pretty obvious. They write, for example,
Speaker 1: quote the presence of mucilage makes the seawater unsuitable for
Speaker 1: bathing because of the bad smell produced and the adherents
Speaker 1: of the mucilage on the skin of bathers. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of like, I don't know, just like describing why
Speaker 1: you wouldn't want to swim in water that has tons
Speaker 1: of mucus floating on top of it. But I appreciate
Speaker 1: that they spelled that out. Um. Now, of course I
Speaker 1: mentioned already that over time it tends to settle on
Speaker 1: the sea floor. And once it's there the author's right quote,
Speaker 1: these large aggregates coat the sediments, extending in certain cases
Speaker 1: for kilometers and causing hypoxic and or anoxic conditions, which
Speaker 1: of course means that the water is being depleted of
Speaker 1: dissolved oxygen, which marine animals need in order to breathe.
Speaker 1: And then they write quote the consequent suffocation of benthic organisms,
Speaker 1: including bottom associated necton, provokes serious economical damage to tourism
Speaker 1: and fisheries. And a noteier necton, these are some of
Speaker 1: the organisms that are being affected. Necton means animals that
Speaker 1: are strong swimmers that can move independent of water currents,
Speaker 1: so this would be opposed to see floor organisms and
Speaker 1: plankton that just float with the currents. So several bad
Speaker 1: things about it. Obviously, it's bad for the local wildlife
Speaker 1: because it can can smother them or suffocate them in
Speaker 1: various ways. But it's also of course bad for humans,
Speaker 1: not just because it kills all the wildlife, but because
Speaker 1: it creates these bad conditions. Nobody wants to swim in
Speaker 1: the water. It's unsightly, it hurts tourism, but also it
Speaker 1: creates a big problem for boats and fisheries. Uh So
Speaker 1: In Jong's article, she talks about how boats sometimes can't
Speaker 1: go to sea when there's all this mucus floating around
Speaker 1: because the mucus um it quote clogs up the seawater
Speaker 1: intake that cools the motor. So if you've got all
Speaker 1: this mucus going in where the motor is trying to
Speaker 1: take in water for coolant, I guess that just clogs
Speaker 1: it up and then the engine can't work. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: not even getting into how little you want to swim
Speaker 1: in these waters, it impacts your ability to go out
Speaker 1: in a boat and ish to use boats for certain
Speaker 1: degrees of trade and travel. Um. Yeah, it's a problem
Speaker 1: regarding the effect on the benthic organisms that are on
Speaker 1: the sea floor or rob I found a couple of
Speaker 1: pictures just for you to look at that include a
Speaker 1: starfish and one has a crab that are both apparently
Speaker 1: just dead and smothered by this sea snot. They have
Speaker 1: turned a kind of palid shade and are I don't
Speaker 1: know what exactly about it killed them. Perhaps it's smothered
Speaker 1: them or interfered with their ability to breathe, or maybe
Speaker 1: it's uh it going through its decomposition cycle somehow removed
Speaker 1: dissolved oxygen from the water that could be affecting them
Speaker 1: as well. But yeah, it just looks generally very bad
Speaker 1: for the what's living on the sea floor. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: encourage everyone to look at these photos because it, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just it looks like zombified sea life. It's just
Speaker 1: really ghastly. And the photography is is beautiful in its
Speaker 1: own right. It's it's it's excellent photography, but it is
Speaker 1: capturing something that is rather ghastly and disturbed. Thank you. Now,
Speaker 1: we mentioned that a lot of the older documented outbreaks
Speaker 1: of of marine mucilage mentioned in that two thousand nine
Speaker 1: paper in PS one, we're in the Adriatic Sea, which
Speaker 1: is of course different than the Sea of marmara Um.
Speaker 1: Apparently there had not been outbreaks of marine mucilage reported
Speaker 1: in Turkey before two thousand seven, but now, of course
Speaker 1: that's where the big problem is situated. It seems like
Speaker 1: some of the problem from the Adriatic has been alleviated
Speaker 1: by some interventions that will talk about later on. But
Speaker 1: this current outbreak of C SNOTS seems to have begun
Speaker 1: in December of uh there's some of the early signs
Speaker 1: of it where that fishermen were noticing that it was
Speaker 1: preventing them from using their nets. I saw this thing
Speaker 1: about the fisher nets mentioned in a lot of articles,
Speaker 1: and I was trying to figure out exactly how it
Speaker 1: makes the nets unusable. I couldn't nail that down for certain, though.
Speaker 1: I think possibly what's going on is it makes the
Speaker 1: nets too heavy, as it like sort clogs them up,
Speaker 1: they don't really work. Or possibly it interferes with the
Speaker 1: ability of water to pass freely through what's supposed to
Speaker 1: be the holes in the nets. Yeah, you can easily
Speaker 1: imagine how it would turn a net into a parachute
Speaker 1: made out of netting and slime. Yeah. Gross. And another
Speaker 1: thing is I actually saw this claim cited in an
Speaker 1: article for The Washington Post by Antonio Neuri Farson, who
Speaker 1: said that it's also sometimes making people wonder whether fish
Speaker 1: that are successfully caught in the these not infested waters
Speaker 1: are safe to eat. And there was no ruling on
Speaker 1: whether they were or not. I don't know of any
Speaker 1: reason why they wouldn't be, but at least said people
Speaker 1: were worried about that. But it wasn't just people in
Speaker 1: the fishing industry who started to notice this. This problem
Speaker 1: with the new outbreak of marine mucilage. Also, it was
Speaker 1: noticed by by scientists. There is one example cited in
Speaker 1: that article in The Guardian by Sillan you Gurtash and
Speaker 1: and this one um this one refers to a scientist
Speaker 1: named Dr Barish ot Salp who is a marine biologist
Speaker 1: at the China cal A Osakes Mart University. And uh
Speaker 1: this researcher was diving to look at corals off the
Speaker 1: China cal A straight and notice the extent of the
Speaker 1: sea saliva underneath the water and points out that it's
Speaker 1: especially dangerous to immobile animals along the bottom of the ocean,
Speaker 1: like coral. Uh So, so Dr ot Salp here found
Speaker 1: that that the gold coral or Savalia savaglia and the
Speaker 1: violeescent sea whip or Para murissa clavada were the most
Speaker 1: armed by the cease not bloom. And then near the shoreline,
Speaker 1: it of course threatens fish populations. There have been reports
Speaker 1: that thousands of fish have turned up dead near coastal settlements.
Speaker 1: So it's bad stuff for the marine life. So just
Speaker 1: out of disruption here, it's it's you know, we recently
Speaker 1: talked about the sargasm weed and and uh, and large
Speaker 1: quantities of that that that at times become a problem
Speaker 1: for coastal communities, and and and actually creating some of
Speaker 1: the same problems we've discussed here, making it difficult to
Speaker 1: to to to leave in a boat that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: making an unpleasant to visit the beach or be in
Speaker 1: the water. But in those cases, I mean, the sargasm
Speaker 1: is still an environment that things are thriving in. And
Speaker 1: this this seems like more of a total disruption of
Speaker 1: all the of the marine environment at all levels. Well,
Speaker 1: it turns out there's evidence that something is thriving in here,
Speaker 1: but it's not very helpful for the marine life around it.
Speaker 1: So get more to that in just a moment. Uh. First,
Speaker 1: I guess I wanted to talk about, like what actually
Speaker 1: is this stuff physically, Like what is it and how
Speaker 1: is it formed? So here I'm turning back to that
Speaker 1: study from two thousand nine in p o OS one
Speaker 1: by den O Varro at all, and the way they
Speaker 1: explain it is that marine mucilage starts with what's known
Speaker 1: as marine snow. So I'm gonna read from their their
Speaker 1: explanation in their introductory section here they define marine snow
Speaker 1: as quote amorphous aggregates with the size ranging from a
Speaker 1: few millimeters to several meters, and so these are just
Speaker 1: little flex of organic material that form an important part
Speaker 1: of of the ocean because of course it's marine snow
Speaker 1: raining down from the the the trophic areas in the
Speaker 1: top of the water column where you've got the photosynthesizing organisms,
Speaker 1: you know, they make energy from from sunlight, and then
Speaker 1: they die and float down or stuff they produce comes
Speaker 1: off of them and floats down, and it creates this
Speaker 1: sort of blizzard of organic material that rains down below
Speaker 1: and feeds organisms that live much lower down in the
Speaker 1: water column who are not able to produce energy from sunlight.
Speaker 1: And of course that processes is, as they say, ubiquitous
Speaker 1: in the oceans of the world. It's it's everywhere. But
Speaker 1: then they write quote water columns stratification, So that's the
Speaker 1: forming of these layers in the water column. Water column
Speaker 1: stratification under summer conditions favors the progressive coalescence of small
Speaker 1: sized aggregates into large, massive sheets, thin layers, flocks, and clouds,
Speaker 1: which are collectively known as marine mucilage. Mucilage is a
Speaker 1: gelatinous evolving stage of marine snow, which can reach huge
Speaker 1: dimensions and cover areas of hundreds of kilometers of coastline.
Speaker 1: Now we'll come back to the exact mechanics of how
Speaker 1: those aggregates form in the water column. But yeah, so
Speaker 1: what what what's going on here is that something that
Speaker 1: would be marine snow just these little flex of mucus
Speaker 1: or decomposing matter or or organic material of some kind
Speaker 1: collect when there are certain conditions in the water column,
Speaker 1: and they start to stick together and form these huge masses,
Speaker 1: and those masses become marine mucilage, again the gelatinous evolving
Speaker 1: stage of marine snow. So in terms of its chemical composition,
Speaker 1: they say, marine mucilage is quote is made of exo
Speaker 1: polymeric compounds with highly colloidal properties that are released by
Speaker 1: marine organisms through different processes including phytoplankton exudation of photosynthetically
Speaker 1: derived carbohydrates produced under stressful conditions. Uh. And then they
Speaker 1: say and through the death and composition of cell wall debris.
Speaker 1: Such a release can be coupled with a limited ability
Speaker 1: of prokaryotes to hydrolyze these exo polymers by means of
Speaker 1: extracellular enzymes, leading to the release and accumulation of large
Speaker 1: molecular weight compounds in the system. Uh so, so a
Speaker 1: lot of this stuff is being produced by phytoplankton and
Speaker 1: it has a carbohydrate basis. Though another researcher that I
Speaker 1: was reading was saying that the marine muselage ends up
Speaker 1: being this combination of carbohydrates, proteins, and fat, which is
Speaker 1: funny because it makes it like, you know, it's the
Speaker 1: full gamut. It's like a gravy, it's got everything. But
Speaker 1: apparently these these uh carbohydrates from phytoplankton are a big
Speaker 1: part of it. And then we come back to what
Speaker 1: you mentioned a minute ago about whether this would be
Speaker 1: a habitat or not. So we know the sarcasm seaweed
Speaker 1: is a is a habitat. Uh. The authors here right
Speaker 1: quote these processes can be associated with viral infections of
Speaker 1: prokaryotes and phytoplankton and the consequent cell license parentheses viral shunt,
Speaker 1: which further contributes to release and accumulation of dissolved organic
Speaker 1: matter in the water column. And what they end up
Speaker 1: alleging is that the build up a marine mucilage essentially
Speaker 1: forms a habitat for potentially pathogenic bacteria and viruses. So
Speaker 1: e coal I can thrive in these things, which can
Speaker 1: lead to infections of other organisms in the water, which
Speaker 1: can sort of create a feedback loop here. Oh, that's
Speaker 1: that's not good at all. That's that's not the sort
Speaker 1: of environment we're looking for. So I guess it's time
Speaker 1: to talk about, like what are the causes, what what
Speaker 1: is the process, and what are the causes that creates
Speaker 1: this kind of unprecedented build up of of marine mucilage. Well,
Speaker 1: having seen Ghostbusters too, I assume it has to do
Speaker 1: with like negative uh, like like emotions building up in
Speaker 1: an urban population that some museum in Istanbul imported a
Speaker 1: painting of Vigo the Carpathian and uh yeah, and everybody
Speaker 1: in the city started being mean to each other. And
Speaker 1: then this is what you get, alright, case close. We
Speaker 1: gotta do something about that that painting. Got to shoot
Speaker 1: that painting with some some charged slime. Is that what
Speaker 1: they do? And oh yeah they Oh that's right in
Speaker 1: in Ghostbusters two. Yeah, they charged the slime with good
Speaker 1: vibes by having everybody dance to that song and out
Speaker 1: and they shoot it and they shoot it out of
Speaker 1: the guns. Yeah, they defeat they defeat Vigo with good vibes.
Speaker 1: That was that was you know, say what you about
Speaker 1: Ghostbusters two, but it leaned into the slime, like I'm
Speaker 1: guessing Ackroyd and Raymison they were like, well, what worked
Speaker 1: in the first one, Oh the slime, the slime worked,
Speaker 1: let's do let's do even more slime. Ghostbusters two is
Speaker 1: not great, but all the Vigo the Carpathian scenes are wonderful.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I forget that name of that actor talking
Speaker 1: to him. Oh yeah, he's a German actor that played
Speaker 1: the actual Vigo Um a former boxer, kind of a
Speaker 1: man of mystery. But he also pops up in John
Speaker 1: Carpenter's in the Mouth of Madness, playing a distraught villager
Speaker 1: in some sort of nightmare realm. And it's a it's
Speaker 1: it's a one of many fun little cameos in that movie.
Speaker 1: Wilhelm von Homburg was his name, and he was a wrestler,
Speaker 1: perhaps a boxer too, but he was definitely a wrestler.
Speaker 1: He was also in die Hard, Oh and die Hard.
Speaker 1: Oh was he one of the villains. Oh I almost
Speaker 1: I am almost certain he was. Yeah, I don't think
Speaker 1: this is a kind of guy who played anything. But wait,
Speaker 1: it wasn't the police chief who was also in the
Speaker 1: breakfast club. I can't imagine this guy every play police chief,
Speaker 1: not not in the US anyway, Maybe he played police
Speaker 1: chief and I could see him playing a cop like
Speaker 1: in a German show. So it's possible. No, I was
Speaker 1: joking it was not that guy at don't I forget
Speaker 1: his name, but that guy's that guy. Everybody knows that guy. Yeah, okay, anyway, sorry,
Speaker 1: we gotta come back to So the causes the causes
Speaker 1: of marine mucilage um, so across everything I was reading,
Speaker 1: there are three main causes that have been uh put
Speaker 1: forth as the probable primary explanations of what's going on
Speaker 1: with this with this cease and outbreak. And these causes are,
Speaker 1: and I'll explain each of these as we go on.
Speaker 1: Warmer temperatures, calm weather, and specific kinds of water pollution. Now,
Speaker 1: first of all, I mentioned warm temperatures. Why would warm
Speaker 1: temperatures contribute, Well, one reason is that phytoplankton populations apparently
Speaker 1: grow more at higher temperatures, and phytoplankton seems to be
Speaker 1: one of the main or the main source of of
Speaker 1: this marine mucilage build up. And so of course ocean
Speaker 1: waters are getting warmer. That's consistent with climate change. One
Speaker 1: Turkish researcher I was reading was cited in that Washington
Speaker 1: Post article mentioned that the Sea of Marmora was several
Speaker 1: degrees warmer than average after a very mild winter, And
Speaker 1: of course, uh, there's just continuous warming of the oceans
Speaker 1: due to climate change. But then also you've got the
Speaker 1: idea of particular kinds of pollution. So one thing that
Speaker 1: is definitely true is you don't want to overfeed the sea.
Speaker 1: That can cause really bad things to happen downstream in
Speaker 1: the ocean. Uh. These explosions of sea saliva in Turkey
Speaker 1: are probably caused, like I said, mostly by phytoplankton, which
Speaker 1: are microscopic marine algae, and they are primary autotrophs in
Speaker 1: the waters, so they are sort of the bottom level
Speaker 1: of the food chain within ocean ecosystems. Their photosynthesizers, they're
Speaker 1: they're the base of the food chain and the oceans,
Speaker 1: but also producers of oxygen that allows water dwelling animals
Speaker 1: to breathe. But when phytoplankton population surge, they can have
Speaker 1: devastating effects on the ecosystems around them. And one way
Speaker 1: that phytoplankton populations can surge and uh and existing phytoplankton
Speaker 1: can produce an excess of mucus is when there are
Speaker 1: certain imbalances of nutrients that are injected into natural waterways,
Speaker 1: and specifically what I've seen called out here are the
Speaker 1: nutrients nitrogen and phosphorus. Now, why would the Sea of
Speaker 1: Marmara have especially high levels of nitrogen and phosphorus. Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, it is fed directly from the Black Sea,
Speaker 1: which tends to be nutrient rich anyway. But it's also
Speaker 1: fed by wastewater runoff for um like twenty million people,
Speaker 1: which would include untreated wastewater so like like sewage, but
Speaker 1: also agricultural runoff which contains things like fertilizers. This can
Speaker 1: lead to a chain reaction in which the phytoplankton sort
Speaker 1: of become stressed and under conditions of stress they exude
Speaker 1: mucus or this this mucus like material that of course
Speaker 1: can lead to these runaway conditions. Now how exactly does
Speaker 1: this process happen? Well, it's actually described very well in
Speaker 1: that that Sarah Jong article in the Atlantic from from
Speaker 1: from June twenty one. So she backs up to the
Speaker 1: starting point that we already talked about with with marines snow.
Speaker 1: You've got marine snow already in the water, but then
Speaker 1: you've got these imbalances of nutrients that are largely caused
Speaker 1: by uh, the untreated waste water and the agricultural runoff
Speaker 1: that may contain fertilizers. And this leads the phytoplankton in
Speaker 1: the water to produce copious mucus. The excess of mucus
Speaker 1: then accumulates into these these things we mentioned earlier that
Speaker 1: we're sometimes called stringers, the you know, these snot like strings,
Speaker 1: and then that accumulates into clouds and then ends up
Speaker 1: somehow floating up onto the surface becoming these sheets. Now,
Speaker 1: one question is why do warm water and calm weather
Speaker 1: conditions also contribute to marine mucilage build up. Well, it
Speaker 1: goes like this. In the warmer months, the sun heats
Speaker 1: up the top layer of the water column near the surface,
Speaker 1: which causes increased stratification. So the warm layer of water
Speaker 1: above the cold layers of water below, and the cold
Speaker 1: layer of water is denser than the warm layer of water.
Speaker 1: And salinity also affects the saltier water is denser than
Speaker 1: less salty water, which is why in really salty bodies
Speaker 1: of water, like the Dead Sea, it's easier for things
Speaker 1: to float. It's because the water is denser, but also
Speaker 1: cold water is denser, so mucus forms in the top
Speaker 1: layer of the water where the photosynthesizing organisms, the phytoplankton,
Speaker 1: are up near the top of the water. They produced
Speaker 1: the mucus. After it's produced, the mucus starts to sink,
Speaker 1: but because of the water column stratification, at some point
Speaker 1: it hits dense cool water and stop sinking. It just
Speaker 1: hangs around, and as it hangs around, it starts to
Speaker 1: aggregate together and accumulate into these strings or clouds. And
Speaker 1: here's where the third element comes in. I mentioned h
Speaker 1: I mentioned warm temperatures, the pollution, but also the calm weather.
Speaker 1: Winds and storms could normally come in to rough up
Speaker 1: the waters and essentially tear up, churn up forming strings
Speaker 1: and clouds of mucus. But if the weather is especially calm,
Speaker 1: that doesn't happen. For example, we talked about how this
Speaker 1: was historically observed in the Adriatic Sea. The Adriatic Sea
Speaker 1: tends to be relatively calm. Then after that, genres there
Speaker 1: are bacteria within all of this mucilage that start to
Speaker 1: decompose it, and as they decompose it, they release gases,
Speaker 1: forming bubbles within this accumulated matrix of mucus, and then
Speaker 1: it floats to the top of the water and collects
Speaker 1: in sheets on the surface. And one astounding fact that
Speaker 1: Jong mentioned is the quote in the Adriatic Sea, the
Speaker 1: arm of the Mediterranean, just east of the Italian Peninsula,
Speaker 1: the floating mucus can dry and toughen in the sun.
Speaker 1: Seagulls are known to walk on it. So one of
Speaker 1: the things about this, I mean, we're talking about this
Speaker 1: this overabundance of slime caused by these the by by
Speaker 1: pollution changes in the environment. I mean, it really really
Speaker 1: get the sense of like the mass ouzing of of
Speaker 1: the ocean's pus, you know, like the the the zing
Speaker 1: of a massive infection. Yeah, that's funny. One of the
Speaker 1: articles I read it, though I don't recall which one,
Speaker 1: did cite a marine biologist, I think, or it was
Speaker 1: some researcher in this area who was saying that it's
Speaker 1: sort of like the ocean has the flu and this
Speaker 1: is this is the mucus coming out of its nose.
Speaker 1: You know, it reflects a sort of general sickness in
Speaker 1: the ecosystem due to h due to pollution, due to
Speaker 1: changing temperatures, and and all that adding up together. Now,
Speaker 1: of course it comes to the question of can anything
Speaker 1: be done about this, about this cease not the plague
Speaker 1: of mucus here. There are a few sort of levels
Speaker 1: at which you could answer that question. One is, well,
Speaker 1: can anything be done about it once it is here,
Speaker 1: once it's all collected. I've read that Turkish authorities are
Speaker 1: trying some possible solutions. In that that Washington Post article
Speaker 1: I mentioned by Antonio Nouri Farzan. She mentions that they
Speaker 1: they have floated the idea of pun not intended of
Speaker 1: dredging the sea floor as a way to possibly try
Speaker 1: to remove some of it has settled on on the bottom.
Speaker 1: But they're also just vacuuming it up in the surface
Speaker 1: from the surface, and we've seen that in some of
Speaker 1: the images we talked about earlier, these photographs of these
Speaker 1: workers with hoses just trying to suck up the slime
Speaker 1: from near the coasts. Uh farce On writes quote in
Speaker 1: ismt workers have laboriously collected more than a hundred and
Speaker 1: ten tons of the mucus, which was sent to an
Speaker 1: incinerator for disposal. I wonder what it smells like downwind
Speaker 1: of that incinerator. What what is the smell of grilled snot?
Speaker 1: Oh man, this would be a good one for the Ghostbusters, right,
Speaker 1: because it's this is the smell of having just fired
Speaker 1: a proton pack uh into some sort of a slime
Speaker 1: ectoplasm based organism or spiritual being fried ghost. Yes. So
Speaker 1: there are you know, some things that people are that
Speaker 1: they're trying to do, Turkish authorities are trying to do.
Speaker 1: Now that this problem has already happened, the bigger question
Speaker 1: would be how do you prevent it from happening in
Speaker 1: future seasons. So one of the big things, obviously is
Speaker 1: reducing pollution, reducing wastewater runoff into the Sea of Marmara,
Speaker 1: reducing it into any sea where this could happen um,
Speaker 1: and that would prevent the this build up, this imbalance
Speaker 1: of nutrients that sets off this chain reaction by feeding
Speaker 1: the phytoplankton like that, And there is some indication that
Speaker 1: that could work. According to Jong's article, there is there's
Speaker 1: every reason to think halting pollution could actually make a
Speaker 1: difference in the following years because of what we've already
Speaker 1: seen work in the Adriatic. See you remember the Adriatic
Speaker 1: is where where these older reports from the eighteenth century
Speaker 1: of the Mare Sporco had taken place. And John Wrights
Speaker 1: quote in the Adriatic uh pusque Do says, and that's
Speaker 1: a researcher who was one of the authors of that
Speaker 1: two thousand nine article, says that mucilage outbreaks have died
Speaker 1: down since Italy began cleaning up the waste water that
Speaker 1: flows into it. The sea has returned to what looks
Speaker 1: like a healthier, less slimy normal. So it looks like
Speaker 1: this sort of worked in the Adriatic just stopped polluting
Speaker 1: the wa better as much. But there have been other
Speaker 1: things that have been mentioned in that that Guardian article
Speaker 1: I was talking about earlier. It cites a researcher, damed
Speaker 1: Dr nes leyhan Os Deli Say, who is a marine
Speaker 1: biologist at Istanbul University, and this researcher also mentions over fishing,
Speaker 1: stop over fishing, because fishing removes organisms that prey on
Speaker 1: the phytoplankton and help keep it from getting out of control.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like how you know, you don't
Speaker 1: want to take the wolves out of the park, right
Speaker 1: because you could get an overabundance of prey animals. You
Speaker 1: also don't want to take the fish that feed on
Speaker 1: these autotrophes, take too many of them out of the waterways, right,
Speaker 1: So so yeah, don't So we need to do not
Speaker 1: over fish. We need to cut down on the amount
Speaker 1: of pollutants that are leaking into these these bodies of water.
Speaker 1: And uh well, I mean on top of that too,
Speaker 1: we already pointed to climate change being an issue as well, right,
Speaker 1: And as with so many issues, you end up seeing
Speaker 1: and like, why is this weird thing happening in the
Speaker 1: ocean right now? It seems like a large contributing macroscopic
Speaker 1: factor in the background is climate change probably, you know,
Speaker 1: as the as the waters warm, that changes just all
Speaker 1: kinds of complex interactions and the ecosystems, and so of
Speaker 1: course climate change is really the the ultimate battle we
Speaker 1: have to fight in the long term. But so, I
Speaker 1: guess that does it for me. With the the specific
Speaker 1: outbreak of marine mucilage in in the Sea of Marmara,
Speaker 1: and I guess originally I was just captivated by that
Speaker 1: that article in the Atlantic and the photographs that I
Speaker 1: saw along with it. But it also this subject got
Speaker 1: me thinking about how how slime, mucus and snot are,
Speaker 1: as we said earlier, fairly loose terms, and not every
Speaker 1: kind of snot in the sea is identical or has
Speaker 1: the same biochemical origin and when So, when I was
Speaker 1: searching around for other reports of different kinds of C
Speaker 1: snot quote, one that I came across was a totally
Speaker 1: different substance that was referred to by researchers with this term.
Speaker 1: That was in the Gulf of Mexico following the deep
Speaker 1: Water Horizon oil spill. Yeah. Yeah, this is the perfect
Speaker 1: place to go, you know, having just discussed the horrors
Speaker 1: of the oil age, um the ongoing horrors of the
Speaker 1: oil age, because yeah, the deep Water Horizon spill gave
Speaker 1: us a kind of a particular type of of slime.
Speaker 1: So the deep part of horizons spilled to refresh everyone.
Speaker 1: This was, by many estimates, the largest marine oil spill
Speaker 1: in history. It occurred on April in the Gulf of
Speaker 1: Mexico on the BP operated Macondo Prospect Macondo Oil Prospect,
Speaker 1: and it dumped an estimated four point nine million barrels
Speaker 1: I've also seen I think these were earlier estimates four
Speaker 1: point one million barrels UH into the Gulf of Mexico,
Speaker 1: in addition to an estimated three hundred and sixty three
Speaker 1: thousand tons of natural gas. It's a sort of unimaginable scale. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And um, you know, as the name implies here, the
Speaker 1: deep Water Horizon operated in deep water just beyond the
Speaker 1: edge of the continental shelf. And we were both looking
Speaker 1: at a paper from from Mark shrope that was in
Speaker 1: Nature back in twleven, so in the you know, this
Speaker 1: came out right afterwards. This was in the immediate period
Speaker 1: of of of research, just a lot of researchers getting
Speaker 1: involved in trying to figure out what is the damage?
Speaker 1: You know that I think it pretty quickly we realized
Speaker 1: it was extensive, but but exactly what was the damage
Speaker 1: to to the environment. And this article, which you can
Speaker 1: look up, it's available for free online, is titled deep
Speaker 1: Wounds and and in that article shrope Um points out
Speaker 1: the collection and burning efforts UH only took care of
Speaker 1: an estimated quarter of the liquid from the well. The
Speaker 1: rest of it was dispersed into the sea in small droplets. UH.
Speaker 1: In tar balls that formed. Some of it was chemically dispersed,
Speaker 1: and some of it evaporated and or dissolved, but short
Speaker 1: rites that researchers began to realize pretty quickly that while
Speaker 1: some of the uh, you know, the surf, a shallow
Speaker 1: and coastal damage was the most obvious, deep environments were
Speaker 1: hit really hard as well. The researchers he talked to
Speaker 1: in the article describe a pervasive layer of putrefied sediment
Speaker 1: containing dead sediment dwellers, you know, different organisms and worms
Speaker 1: and the like, dead jellyfish from layers above that had
Speaker 1: died and had drifted down and also highly disrupted um
Speaker 1: or even just you know, counseled canceled out microbial activity.
Speaker 1: So the result was kind of a necro sludge. They
Speaker 1: did find some things that were still technically alive in it.
Speaker 1: They pointed to some snails in particular, but the snails
Speaker 1: were no longer moving. They weren't behaving like living snails anymore,
Speaker 1: which just makes it all the more creepy, and so
Speaker 1: of course it as a completely different original cause. But
Speaker 1: this does remind me of the images of the the
Speaker 1: sludge or the slime or the mucus from these phytoplankton
Speaker 1: blooms settling down on the sea floor in the Sea
Speaker 1: of Marmara and smothering organisms there. Yeah, some of the
Speaker 1: descriptions were also sounded a lot like what we're looking
Speaker 1: at here is described as looking like cauliflower, you know,
Speaker 1: as having this kind of this ghastly appearance. Now, scientists
Speaker 1: from the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill and Ecosystem Science
Speaker 1: Conference said that as much as one third of the
Speaker 1: oil from the Deep Water Horizon disaster may have mixed
Speaker 1: with deep ocean sediments and and here it risks lasting
Speaker 1: damage to the two ecosystems and commercial fisheries. Researchers were reporting,
Speaker 1: for instance, normally pink and lighter jellies from from further
Speaker 1: up in the water column that were found to be
Speaker 1: black or brown. And so yeah, that the damage from
Speaker 1: an event on this scale was this thought to extend
Speaker 1: just throughout the water column. So certainly the surface, certainly
Speaker 1: um on the on the the shore, but also deep
Speaker 1: down right down to the very bottom. Everything about that
Speaker 1: is a truly sad and devastating story. But thinking about
Speaker 1: biological mucus, I do kind of come back to despite
Speaker 1: you know, all of the grossness that we've been talking
Speaker 1: about throughout the middle of this episode, a kind of
Speaker 1: wonder um about the ways that that uh tiny you know, microscopically,
Speaker 1: invisibly microscopic organisms can so quickly, uh change the whole
Speaker 1: environment with with just like releasing mucus or mucus like substances.
Speaker 1: Obviously the effects are bad, but in a strange way,
Speaker 1: I find something conceptually kind of beautiful about it. Well,
Speaker 1: in a way like the viscosity comes first, Like if
Speaker 1: you had a scenario, whether I a mythological creator god
Speaker 1: or gods is sort of toy in around with different
Speaker 1: ideas and and you know, one day they have something
Speaker 1: and one of their tendance comes and so what do
Speaker 1: you what do you got there? And they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's it's great, it's um, it's look at it. I
Speaker 1: think I'm gonna call it slime. I'm gonna base an
Speaker 1: entire ecosystem on this stuff. What do you think the
Speaker 1: whole planet? And they're like, yeah, yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 1: The mucus is the life. Yeah. I mean, maybe that's
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why slime based creatures and monsters
Speaker 1: sometimes resonate, is that um is that we we realize
Speaker 1: that this isn't this is this is life, you know,
Speaker 1: this is this is a hallmark of life. That's why
Speaker 1: the blob is is grim. That's why verious slime creatures
Speaker 1: are grim, because they're just an exaggeration of what we
Speaker 1: see when we look closely at the world around us.
Speaker 1: Maybe the same way that people watch crime shows and
Speaker 1: anti heroes and all that and see people behaving badly
Speaker 1: and kind of secretly see elements of their own personality
Speaker 1: that they kind of keep submerged throughout life but are
Speaker 1: coming through in this character on the screen or in
Speaker 1: the book. I wonder if it's similar like that, but
Speaker 1: at a biological level. With with slime monsters, you kind
Speaker 1: of you see that part of yourself. You kind of
Speaker 1: see like, oh, this mass of floating mucus. In a way,
Speaker 1: that's kind of what that's what I am. That's a
Speaker 1: big part of me. Oh man, you know, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: smelling a new genre of podcas ask now, I think
Speaker 1: we'll call it true slime. True slime. Yes, we'll be pioneers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's gotta already exist. Somebody has already got a true slim.
Speaker 1: Surely we'll go and like I said, there's enough there.
Speaker 1: I think you could make a podcast call it True
Speaker 1: Slime and just talk about something slime related in every
Speaker 1: episode and you'd be good to go. God, that sounds
Speaker 1: like it was made for me. All right, Well we're
Speaker 1: gonna go ahead and close the book on this one.
Speaker 1: But hey, if you want to listen to other episodes
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Speaker 1: As always, to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
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