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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Time for a vault episode. This one originally aired July one,

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Speaker 1: and it is called The Plague of Mucus? Are you prepared?

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Speaker 1: Are you alright? Let's let's jump right into it. Welcome

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Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow your Mind, production of My Heart Radio. Hey,

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Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is

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Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. In today, we're gonna

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Speaker 1: be diving into the ocean to take a look at slime, froth, ooze,

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Speaker 1: and mucus of various kinds. And I thought maybe a

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Speaker 1: good way to get in the mood for this kind

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Speaker 1: of discussion would be to do a couple of literary readings,

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Speaker 1: perhaps Rob if your game. When I was thinking about

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Speaker 1: this topic, something immediately came to mind. I remember there

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Speaker 1: was some passage from Walt Whitman in which he identified

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Speaker 1: very strongly and emotionally with becoming a bit of ooze,

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Speaker 1: froth and debris washing in the surf. Do do you

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Speaker 1: mind if I read a bit of Walt Whitman here? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: go for it. Okay, so this is from his poem

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Speaker 1: that I think the title has just taken from the

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Speaker 1: first line, but it's called as I Ebbed with the

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Speaker 1: Ocean of Life. The whole poem is too long to read,

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Speaker 1: but I'm just going to read from the fourth section here,

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Speaker 1: where he really talks about becoming the use Ebb ocean

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Speaker 1: of life. The flow will return cease, not your moaning,

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Speaker 1: you fierce old mother, endlessly cry for your castaways. But

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Speaker 1: fear not deny not me Russell, not up so hoarse

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Speaker 1: and angry against my feet. As I touch you or

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Speaker 1: gather from you, I mean tenderly by you and all

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Speaker 1: I gather for myself and for this phantom, looking down

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Speaker 1: where we lead, and following me and mine, Me and mine.

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Speaker 1: Loose wind rows, little corpses, froth snowy white, and bubbles.

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Speaker 1: See from my dead lips, the ooze exuding at last,

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Speaker 1: See the prismatic colors, glistening and rolling, tufts of straw, sand,

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Speaker 1: fragments buoyed hither from many moods, one contradicting another, from

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Speaker 1: the storm, the long calm, the darkness, the swell, musing, pondering,

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Speaker 1: a breath, a briny tear, a dab of liquid or

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Speaker 1: soil up just as much out of fathomless workings, fermented

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Speaker 1: and thrown, a limp blossom or two torn just as

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Speaker 1: much over the waves, floating, drifted at random, just as

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Speaker 1: much for us that sobbing dirge of nature. Just as much.

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Speaker 1: Whence we come, that blare of the cloud trumpets, we

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Speaker 1: capricious brought hither we know not whence spread out before you.

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Speaker 1: You up there, walking or sitting, whoever you are, we

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Speaker 1: two lie in drifts at your feet. O man, women, Uh,

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Speaker 1: feeling a little moody in that one. Yeah, this is

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Speaker 1: weird because, I mean, Whitman has his his darker moods,

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Speaker 1: but I feel like this is definitely one of the

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Speaker 1: more downer Whitman moments. A lot of times he finds

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Speaker 1: a way to surge back up. But that's the end

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Speaker 1: of the poem. It kind of ends on a down note. Though. Weirdly,

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Speaker 1: even when Whitman is feeling down, you can still he

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Speaker 1: You can tell he still has that universal connectedness perspective.

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Speaker 1: He still is every molecule of everything in the ocean,

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Speaker 1: even all the debris and ooze and froth and sand

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Speaker 1: and trash. Yeah, No, that's that's that's really good. And uh.

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Speaker 1: And when you initially brought this up and I was

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Speaker 1: reading it, I was like, oh man, this is this

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Speaker 1: is reminding me of something, not that it's reminding me

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Speaker 1: of something specific, but just sort of a similar vibe.

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Speaker 1: And it got me thinking about h G wells uh uh.

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Speaker 1: It's particularly I can't remember if it's when the time

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Speaker 1: traveler goes to the very end of time or the

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Speaker 1: very beginning, but he encounters kind of like, you know,

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Speaker 1: this this sludge like dark world of slimy life. I

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Speaker 1: don't remember either way. Well, he goes towards the end,

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Speaker 1: when he goes the farthest in the future, it's when

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Speaker 1: he encounters that the world this just crabs. It's like

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Speaker 1: remember those those big like Arthur pod type creatures. But

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Speaker 1: maybe he also goes back in time. Maybe that's working

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Speaker 1: on the the old school primordial ooze kind of idea

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Speaker 1: of the origins of life. Yeah. And you see this

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Speaker 1: pop up in weird fiction of the twentieth century as well,

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Speaker 1: particularly in the works of of Clark Ashton Smith, who

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Speaker 1: was a writer of weird dark fantasy tales and it

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Speaker 1: was also a poet. And uh and I believe later

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Speaker 1: in life he worked with like sculpture. But but I

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Speaker 1: was looking up, like, what was it. What's a nice

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Speaker 1: slimy ocean bit from Clark Ashton Smith? And I found

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Speaker 1: a really good one, from a story titled The Light

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Speaker 1: from the Pole. And I'm not sure when this was written.

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Speaker 1: I don't think it was actually published until after his death.

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Speaker 1: But I'm just going to read a quick paragraph from this,

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Speaker 1: if you don't mind, go for it. Through the middle summer,

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Speaker 1: the fisher folk who dwelt in wattle huts below the

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Speaker 1: tall towers of far Azen went forth daily in their

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Speaker 1: coracles of hide and willow, and cast their nets in

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Speaker 1: the accustomed manner of their trade. But all that they

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Speaker 1: gathered from the sea was dead and withered, as if

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Speaker 1: in the blast of great coldness, such as would emanate

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Speaker 1: from the trans Arctic ice. And they drew forth from

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Speaker 1: their assigns. Living monsters as well, such as the eldest captains,

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Speaker 1: had never beheld things triple headed and tailed and thinned

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Speaker 1: with horror, black shapeless things that turned a liquid foulness,

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Speaker 1: and ran from the net like a vile i corps,

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Speaker 1: or headless shapes like bloated moons with green frozen rays

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Speaker 1: about them, or things leprous eye and bearded with stiffly

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Speaker 1: oozing slime. It was as if some transdimensional and long

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Speaker 1: blocked channel beneath the known, familiar seas of Earth had

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Speaker 1: opened suddenly into the strange waters of ultra mundane oceans

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Speaker 1: teeming with repulsive and malformed life. Wow. Well that goes

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Speaker 1: the supernatural dimensions, but at the same time still connects

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Speaker 1: very much to the topic we're gonna be talking about today. Yeah. Oh,

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Speaker 1: and by the way, if some of you are wanting

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Speaker 1: ultra mundane, that just sounds like even more mundane than usual.

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Speaker 1: It actually means the opposite. Ultramundane means like from beyond

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Speaker 1: the soldier system. Oh. I would not have known that. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it threw me for your curve at first, because I'm like, oh,

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Speaker 1: the ultra mundane. Yeah, man, that must be and that's

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Speaker 1: that's just supermundane. But now what does the part knew

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Speaker 1: what he was doing? Especially average? But anyway, on these

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Speaker 1: themes of slime and mucus, it got me thinking about

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Speaker 1: this question, like, what does life from the microscopic level

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Speaker 1: to the plants and the megafauna all have in common. Well,

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Speaker 1: one thing that is common to most life, especially most

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Speaker 1: life that lives in the water, is mucus or slime,

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Speaker 1: you know, some kind of like slimy substances, viscous, slimy,

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Speaker 1: lubricating kinds of substances in the body are really some

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Speaker 1: of the keystones of organic life. I was thinking about, how, uh,

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Speaker 1: there was one time when I was in high school

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Speaker 1: and I remember being present for a a sermon that

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Speaker 1: was preached on the verse in the Bible about how

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Speaker 1: the blood is the life, and the point of the

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Speaker 1: sermon was that was that that statement the blood is

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Speaker 1: the life in the Bible is scientifically accurate, which, on reflection,

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Speaker 1: that's kind of a funny claim to make. I mean,

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Speaker 1: I guess that's true. Like if you remove all the

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Speaker 1: blood from something, it doesn't live anymore. Um. But but

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Speaker 1: I started thinking about how the slime is the life.

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Speaker 1: The mucus is the life because you've got micro organisms

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Speaker 1: of course that secrete uzy mucus like substances called mucilage.

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Speaker 1: But you can also find that implants. If you break

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Speaker 1: a stalk of succulent, it will leak a viscous mucilage too. Yeah, you,

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Speaker 1: I mean, we could easily do an entire podcast series,

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Speaker 1: if not an entire podcast period on slime because you

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Speaker 1: look at that, I mean, you just look at the

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Speaker 1: ways the importance of slime and the human body, you know, uh,

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Speaker 1: and it's it's it's greatly important. Look at some of

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Speaker 1: the very unique creatures that utilized slime so well. Um.

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Speaker 1: The hag fish, for example, that we've discussed numerous times,

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Speaker 1: a true wizard of slime, um, a sorcerer of ooze

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Speaker 1: that that is able to to to utilize this uh,

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Speaker 1: this this thick, slimy substance that it that it exudes um,

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Speaker 1: you know, so wonderfully as a self defense mechanism. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And the truly amazing thing about the hag fish is

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Speaker 1: how much of it it can create and how fast. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Another big one is the slime that you encounter as

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Speaker 1: the very outer layer of fish in the ocean. You know,

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Speaker 1: like this is it's not just something that is on

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Speaker 1: their body. It is something of their body, but it

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Speaker 1: serves as an outer layer. Um. So you know, when

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Speaker 1: you're when you're handling a fish, even if you're you know,

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Speaker 1: catching and releasing, if you're disrupting that that outer layer,

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Speaker 1: you're disrupting some of the protections afforded to the organism now.

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Speaker 1: But of course there's plenty of internal use for slime

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Speaker 1: and mucus and ooze as well, because if you think

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Speaker 1: about inside your body, tons of your organs and surfaces

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Speaker 1: and tissues are lined with mucus of various sorts that

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Speaker 1: are very important for your body. I mean, you've got

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Speaker 1: mucus in your nose, mucus and all kinds all kinds

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Speaker 1: of parts, so you. But of course, I guess one

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Speaker 1: thing we should recognize is that we are speaking kind

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Speaker 1: of loosely in a general sense, about similar types of

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Speaker 1: substances with similar physical properties that are not all necessarily

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Speaker 1: the same thing. They're not created by the same biochemical

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Speaker 1: pathways always, uh, you know, they come from different kinds

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Speaker 1: of life. But in this loose sense, almost all life

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Speaker 1: has some kind of slime or or ooz or goo

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Speaker 1: or mucus. In common life just kind of makes mucus. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's really the secret of the is

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Speaker 1: right there. But today we wanted to look at this

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Speaker 1: question of what happens when the mucus gets out of hand,

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Speaker 1: what happens when it becomes a plague like mass that

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Speaker 1: is not not merely inside the body, not merely on

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Speaker 1: the body, not merely uh, floating around in little tiny

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Speaker 1: clumps in the shan, but when it comes to dominate

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Speaker 1: the geography and you can see it from airplanes. That's

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Speaker 1: what we're going to talk about today. So shout out

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Speaker 1: that I got the idea to talk about this today

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Speaker 1: when I came across an article in the Atlantic by

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Speaker 1: Sarah Jong called A slimy calamity is creeping across the Sea.

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Speaker 1: And this article is about an organic substance that has

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Speaker 1: been referred to in the scientific literature as marine mucilage,

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Speaker 1: but it is more commonly known to people in the

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Speaker 1: fishing industry and people who have encountered it firsthand as

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Speaker 1: things like sea snot or see saliva. And the article

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Speaker 1: is about how this stuff has lately become an absolute

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Speaker 1: plague near the shores of Turkey, specifically in a place

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Speaker 1: called the Sea of Marmara, which is in northwest Turkey,

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Speaker 1: and it's the body of water that connects the a

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Speaker 1: gan C on the west to the Black Sea on

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Speaker 1: the on the northeast. And so if you have not

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Speaker 1: already read an articles about this stuff, we're seeing pictures

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Speaker 1: of it. This one is really worth looking up to

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Speaker 1: see with your own eyes. In fact, there is an

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Speaker 1: astonishing photo gallery on the website of The Atlantic right

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Speaker 1: now that was posted June one called photos Turkey Cease

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Speaker 1: not Disaster. So I'd highly recommend checking this out if

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Speaker 1: you can. But we will try to describe a few

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Speaker 1: of these images here for those of you who can't

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Speaker 1: go look it up right now. And Rob, I've got

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Speaker 1: these here for you to look at as well. So

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Speaker 1: I pulled a few of them. This first one was

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Speaker 1: a photo taken by Mohammed Ennis Yielder Rim and it's

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Speaker 1: an aerial photo from June one of all these boats

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Speaker 1: in the water off the shore of Istanbul, and it

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Speaker 1: looks like they're floating in one of those buckets that

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Speaker 1: people used to make tie dye t shirts, except instead

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Speaker 1: of all the colors of the rainbow, it's just various

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Speaker 1: hues of off white and tan, it's this giant, floating, swirling,

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Speaker 1: starry night of beige slime. Yeah, this is I think

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Speaker 1: this is a Getty image as well, from the Getty website,

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Speaker 1: but it is um it it's really beautiful. If not,

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Speaker 1: and if I didn't know what it was, I would

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Speaker 1: just assume that this was a painting because it looks

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Speaker 1: like some sort of a surreal uh you know, oil

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Speaker 1: painted ocean upon which the artist has depicted realistic looking

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Speaker 1: um depictions of ships and boats. Well, another way I

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Speaker 1: could view it is again, because this is from a

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Speaker 1: great distance, it is kind of beautiful. It also looks

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Speaker 1: like boats that maybe somehow all became beached on a

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Speaker 1: vast stretch of sand. So like if like if the

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Speaker 1: ocean retreated and left all these boats stranded in the

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Speaker 1: dunes with these drifts and current like patterns all swirling

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Speaker 1: around them, and they were just sitting in the sand.

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Speaker 1: I I could see that being a what this is.

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Speaker 1: But no, they are on the surface of the water.

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Speaker 1: And also I worry for them if they must start

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Speaker 1: their engines. As we'll get to uh a bit later

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Speaker 1: on about about some of the problems that the stuff

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Speaker 1: causes for for powered boats. But as beautiful as this

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Speaker 1: might look from above, as kind of like weirdly, I

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Speaker 1: don't know at that that that boundary line between gross

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Speaker 1: and beautiful when you get up close, it really does

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Speaker 1: get more just obviously disgusting. So this next image is

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Speaker 1: of a diver surfacing from underneath a large mat of

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Speaker 1: marine mucilage. This one was taken by Serhat Kagdas for

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Speaker 1: the Anadolue Agency, which is a Turkish state media organization,

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Speaker 1: and according to the caption, this person is involved in

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Speaker 1: a marine mucilage cleanup operation at a Kata Boston beach

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Speaker 1: which is also in in Istanbul or off the shore

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Speaker 1: of Istanbul. And this is from June of twenty one also.

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Speaker 1: But if if you're trying to imagine the texture of

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Speaker 1: this stuff up close from this image here, it looks

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Speaker 1: kind of like if you've ever tried to make beef stock,

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Speaker 1: or like a poor grammin broth. All of the scum

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Speaker 1: that rises to the top of the pot as the

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Speaker 1: impurities are are removed at first from the bones and

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Speaker 1: the connecting tissues. That that stuff that floats up there,

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Speaker 1: except add into that like some wilted toilet paper and

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Speaker 1: aloe vera gel. Yeah, that that is a good description um.

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Speaker 1: Another way might be to imagine if you filled a

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Speaker 1: crop pot like a pressure cooker with cauliflower and then

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Speaker 1: cooked it way too long where you just turned it

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Speaker 1: to mush. Like that's what this kind of looks like, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so up close, a lot of the beauty has gone

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Speaker 1: and it becomes frankly revolting. But I want to come

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Speaker 1: back on the beautiful side. Because also in this photo

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Speaker 1: gallery they had one that's an underwater image. And one

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Speaker 1: of the things that came through is I started to

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Speaker 1: read more and more about this stuff is how in

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Speaker 1: a lot in some sense, you can't really appreciate what

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Speaker 1: it is unless you look at views of it from underwater. Because,

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Speaker 1: for example, a lot of scientists had been trying to

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Speaker 1: study this stuff for years, but we're having trouble because

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Speaker 1: the equipment that they used to retrieve samples from the

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Speaker 1: water would end up churning it up and shaking it up.

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Speaker 1: That would kind of destroy its structure. So to really

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Speaker 1: see what form it takes as it's just floating in

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Speaker 1: the water column you have you kind of have to

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Speaker 1: go down yourself or see pictures taken from beneath the surface.

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Speaker 1: So this one picture was by Sebnim Costcun also for

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Speaker 1: the Nadolu agency and uh it's an underwater photo of

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Speaker 1: a diver in the Sea of Marmara near a stand bull.

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Speaker 1: Again from this one's from May and this one looks

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Speaker 1: to me like a scene from a Forbidden Planet type

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Speaker 1: vintage sci fi movie. The water is dimly lit but

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Speaker 1: extremely green, and the diver has these twin work lamps

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Speaker 1: that it looks kind of like, you know, crewman Hicks

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Speaker 1: has wandered into an alien spider web. And so there's

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Speaker 1: just this translucent matrix of goop enveloping everything spun right

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Speaker 1: out of the shelb of the sea. Yeah, and I

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Speaker 1: guess it drives home. And you can't tell, really tough

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Speaker 1: on the image how deep the individual is, but yet

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Speaker 1: you certainly get the sense that this is not a

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Speaker 1: mere merely a surface phenomena. This is something that extends

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Speaker 1: at least somewhat into the water column, right, And we'll

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Speaker 1: get into more detail as we go on about how

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Speaker 1: that happens. I think they're there are different stages depending

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Speaker 1: on the conditions that that cause it to float or

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Speaker 1: stay suspended in the water column. Um, but we'll explain

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Speaker 1: that as we go on. One last photo I thought

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Speaker 1: we should look at before we move on, Rob. Is

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Speaker 1: this one of workers trying to vacuum this stuff up

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Speaker 1: with hoses. I think this is again near at stenbol

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Speaker 1: uh In in the Marmara. See this is from June.

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Speaker 1: Uh and the stuff here that's going up into the

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Speaker 1: hose looks very much like overflow from a sewer clean out. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: our big cat it like a lot of cat vomit. Maybe, oh,

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Speaker 1: big cat vomit. You mean, like the vomit is big

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Speaker 1: or like from a big cat, like a lion talking.

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Speaker 1: I'm talking like big time cat cat vomit here, like

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Speaker 1: like cat vomit so expansive that Peter Gabriel write a

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Speaker 1: song about it for real cat vomit. Yeah. One of

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Speaker 1: the articles I was reading about this had a really

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Speaker 1: good physical description. It was by Selene Ugertash, writing for

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Speaker 1: the The for The Guardian in May of one and you.

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Speaker 1: Gurtash said that when seen from above, it looks like

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Speaker 1: a brush of beige swirled across the dark blue waters

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Speaker 1: of the Sea of Marmara. Up close, it resembles a creamy,

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Speaker 1: gelatinous blanket of Quicksand yeah, so from the air looks

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Speaker 1: like a cappuccino ocean, like the surface of a cappuccino.

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Speaker 1: Up close it looks it just looks gross, very grass. Now.

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Speaker 1: In that article in the Atlantic by Sarah Jong, she

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Speaker 1: talks about different names for the different types of accumulations

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Speaker 1: of it. So you've got what's an as marine snow.

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Speaker 1: That's a that's a phenomenon that ultimately connects to marine muselage.

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Speaker 1: But these are of course tiny little flakes and droplets

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Speaker 1: that are usually drifting slowly down towards the sea floor. Uh,

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Speaker 1: they're They're found in the ocean all the time, just

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Speaker 1: the little flakes, little bits of life. They are drifting around.

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Speaker 1: But then when when the marine muselage starts to accumulate,

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Speaker 1: you've got these things called stringers, which he says, resemble

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Speaker 1: a kind of sticky goo. This is more actually similar

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Speaker 1: in appearance to human nasal mucus. But then you've also

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Speaker 1: got clouds, which are maybe more like you know that

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Speaker 1: maybe when the stringers come together they form clouds. It's

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Speaker 1: more like that giant spider web under the surface of

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Speaker 1: the water. Uh. They're they're delicate and they break apart

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Speaker 1: when you touch them. But they just form these big,

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Speaker 1: sort of translucent white masses floating in the water. So

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Speaker 1: I guess we should get more into describing the phenomenon

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Speaker 1: of of what's actually happening here. I mentioned that this

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Speaker 1: is something that's going on into Herkey right now, specifically

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Speaker 1: in the Sea of Marmara. But marine mucilage is a

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Speaker 1: broader phenomenon than what's happening in Turkey right now, both

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Speaker 1: in terms of time and geography. So the Sea of

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Speaker 1: Marmara is not the only place that experiences surges of

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Speaker 1: this stuff, and it's not the first time it has happened.

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Speaker 1: But the slime infestation at Marmara is especially bad this year,

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Speaker 1: and the problem does seem to be getting worse in

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Speaker 1: the region over time. So I found a source illuminating

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Speaker 1: this as a scientific paper discussing marine mucilage in the

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Speaker 1: Adriatic Sea, which is nearby. It's in the Mediterranean. The

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Speaker 1: Adriatic is the stretch of sea between Italy and the Balkans.

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Speaker 1: And this is a paper by Roberto den Ovarro, Serena

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Speaker 1: fonda Umani and Antonio pusque Do and it's called Climate

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Speaker 1: Change and the Potential Spreading of marine mucilage and microbial

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Speaker 1: Pathogens in the Mediterranean Sea. This was published in Plos

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Speaker 1: one in two thousand nine. This is a highly cited

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Speaker 1: paper about marine mucilage. Most of the articles that I

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Speaker 1: was reading mentioned this paper at one point or another.

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Speaker 1: But in tracking the history of this stuff, they go

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Speaker 1: all the way back to the eighteenth century. The author's

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00:20:12,800 --> 00:20:17,320
Speaker 1: right quote. Worldwide, the highly productive and shallow Adriatic Sea,

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Speaker 1: and particularly it's a northern portion within the Mediterranean Basin,

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Speaker 1: is the area most severely affected by the outbreak of

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Speaker 1: massive marine mucilage. Mucilage was reported here for the first

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Speaker 1: time in seventeen twenty nine, and was originally described as

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Speaker 1: a quote dirty c phenomenon, or in Italian that would

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Speaker 1: be mare sporko, because it causes the clogging of fishing nets. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And I do like the name mare Sporko. I'm not

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Speaker 1: quite sure why. Maybe because it sounds like it has

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Speaker 1: a porky element somehow. It could easily be the name

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Speaker 1: of a demon in Dante's Inferno. Oh yeah, yeah, ma

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Speaker 1: Sporko hanging out with you know, the very with the

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Speaker 1: malacotta and all Mala bronco. Or I might be getting

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Speaker 1: that name wrong. Yeah, there's Mala Coda in there, and

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00:21:08,000 --> 00:21:12,520
Speaker 1: of course Scarmiglian, Scarbiglian. Lots of good names. So what

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Speaker 1: would the dirty sea demon be? I mean, usually they're

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Speaker 1: more kind of like animals are personified. This would be

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Speaker 1: like the ocean itself is a demon, yeah, or just

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Speaker 1: kind of a roughly humanoid form made out of this

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Speaker 1: CEA snot that we're describing. That's the way I'm picturing it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So outbreaks of CEA snot, according to the authors of

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Speaker 1: this paper, have been occurring in the Adriatic ever since,

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Speaker 1: ever since they were observed, and you know, possibly before

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Speaker 1: that too, but it was first documented in seventeen twenty

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Speaker 1: nine and they've been recurring ever since. But the frequency

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00:21:43,640 --> 00:21:47,399
Speaker 1: has increased sharply in the last thirty years or so.

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Speaker 1: And this paper was published in two thousand nine, so

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Speaker 1: that would mean since around nineteen eighty. And the author

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Speaker 1: is right about how once this stuff aggregates, an outbreak

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Speaker 1: of marine mucilage can stay floating on the surface or

385
00:22:00,840 --> 00:22:04,800
Speaker 1: suspended throughout the water column for around two to three months,

386
00:22:04,840 --> 00:22:07,000
Speaker 1: and then after that it tends to float down and

387
00:22:07,040 --> 00:22:10,919
Speaker 1: settle on the sea bottom. And there are several reasons

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00:22:10,960 --> 00:22:14,520
Speaker 1: why the stuff is considered undesirable by humans. Some of

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00:22:14,520 --> 00:22:17,480
Speaker 1: them are pretty obvious. They write, for example, quote the

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00:22:17,520 --> 00:22:21,600
Speaker 1: presence of mucilage makes the seawater unsuitable for bathing because

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Speaker 1: of the bad smell produced and the adherents of the

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00:22:24,160 --> 00:22:27,760
Speaker 1: mucilage on the skin of bathers. So it's kind of like,

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Speaker 1: I don't know, just like describing why you wouldn't want

394
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Speaker 1: to swim in water that has tons of mucus floating

395
00:22:32,960 --> 00:22:35,399
Speaker 1: on top of it. But I appreciate that they spelled

396
00:22:35,480 --> 00:22:39,080
Speaker 1: that out. Um. Now, of course I mentioned already that

397
00:22:39,240 --> 00:22:41,879
Speaker 1: over time it tends to settle on the sea floor,

398
00:22:42,600 --> 00:22:46,240
Speaker 1: and once it's there, the author's right quote, these large

399
00:22:46,280 --> 00:22:51,080
Speaker 1: aggregates coat the sediments, extending in certain cases for kilometers

400
00:22:51,119 --> 00:22:55,200
Speaker 1: and causing hypoxic and or anoxic conditions, which of course

401
00:22:55,240 --> 00:22:58,760
Speaker 1: means that the water is being depleted of dissolved oxygen,

402
00:22:58,840 --> 00:23:02,040
Speaker 1: which marine animals need in order to breathe. And then

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00:23:02,080 --> 00:23:06,240
Speaker 1: they write, quote, the consequent suffocation of benthic organisms, including

404
00:23:06,280 --> 00:23:12,119
Speaker 1: bottom associated necton, provokes serious economical damage to tourism and fisheries.

405
00:23:12,600 --> 00:23:16,360
Speaker 1: And a note here necton these are some of the

406
00:23:16,480 --> 00:23:19,320
Speaker 1: organisms that are being affected. Necton means animals that are

407
00:23:19,320 --> 00:23:22,960
Speaker 1: strong swimmers that can move independent of water currents, so

408
00:23:23,040 --> 00:23:26,560
Speaker 1: this would be opposed to seafloor organisms and plankton that

409
00:23:26,640 --> 00:23:29,919
Speaker 1: just float with the currents. So several bad things about it.

410
00:23:29,920 --> 00:23:32,920
Speaker 1: Obviously it's bad for the local wildlife because it can

411
00:23:33,520 --> 00:23:36,920
Speaker 1: can smother them or suffocate them in various ways. But

412
00:23:37,000 --> 00:23:40,040
Speaker 1: it's also of course bad for humans, not just because

413
00:23:40,080 --> 00:23:42,960
Speaker 1: it kills all the wildlife, but because it creates these

414
00:23:43,000 --> 00:23:46,200
Speaker 1: bad conditions. Nobody wants to swim in the water. It's unsightly,

415
00:23:46,240 --> 00:23:49,080
Speaker 1: it hurts tourism, but also it creates a big problem

416
00:23:49,160 --> 00:23:53,400
Speaker 1: for boats and fisheries. Uh So, in Jong's article, she

417
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Speaker 1: talks about how U boats sometimes can't go to sea

418
00:23:58,240 --> 00:24:01,320
Speaker 1: when there's all this mut is floating around because the

419
00:24:01,480 --> 00:24:05,679
Speaker 1: mucus um it quote clogs up the seawater intake that

420
00:24:05,800 --> 00:24:08,880
Speaker 1: cools the motor. So if you've got all this mucus

421
00:24:08,960 --> 00:24:11,280
Speaker 1: going in where the motor is trying to take in

422
00:24:11,359 --> 00:24:14,200
Speaker 1: water for coolant, I guess that just clogs it up

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00:24:14,280 --> 00:24:17,040
Speaker 1: and then the engine can't work. Yeah. So, not even

424
00:24:17,080 --> 00:24:21,320
Speaker 1: getting into how little you want to swim in these waters,

425
00:24:21,640 --> 00:24:24,120
Speaker 1: it impacts your ability to go out in a boat

426
00:24:24,119 --> 00:24:28,280
Speaker 1: and fish, to use boats for certain degrees of trade

427
00:24:28,480 --> 00:24:32,120
Speaker 1: and travel. Um. Yeah, it's a problem. Regarding the effect

428
00:24:32,119 --> 00:24:34,679
Speaker 1: on the benthic organisms that are on the seafloor, A

429
00:24:34,760 --> 00:24:36,520
Speaker 1: rob I found a couple of pictures just for you

430
00:24:36,600 --> 00:24:38,880
Speaker 1: to look at. That include a starfish and one has

431
00:24:38,920 --> 00:24:42,800
Speaker 1: a crab that are both apparently just dead and smothered

432
00:24:42,880 --> 00:24:45,320
Speaker 1: by the sea snot they have turned a kind of

433
00:24:45,600 --> 00:24:49,480
Speaker 1: palid shade and are I don't know what exactly about

434
00:24:49,480 --> 00:24:51,960
Speaker 1: it killed them, Perhaps it smothered them or interfered with

435
00:24:51,960 --> 00:24:55,160
Speaker 1: their ability to breathe, or maybe it's uh, it going

436
00:24:55,200 --> 00:24:59,840
Speaker 1: through its decomposition cycle somehow removed dissolved oxygen from the

437
00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:02,200
Speaker 1: water that could be affecting them as well. But yeah,

438
00:25:02,200 --> 00:25:04,800
Speaker 1: it just looks generally very bad for the what's living

439
00:25:04,800 --> 00:25:06,879
Speaker 1: on the sea floor. Yeah, I encourage everyone to look

440
00:25:06,920 --> 00:25:08,800
Speaker 1: at these photos because it, yeah, it's just it looks

441
00:25:08,800 --> 00:25:11,960
Speaker 1: like zombified sea life. It's just really ghastly. And the

442
00:25:12,040 --> 00:25:15,440
Speaker 1: photography is is beautiful in its own right. It's it's

443
00:25:15,520 --> 00:25:18,920
Speaker 1: it's excellent photography, but it is capturing something that is

444
00:25:19,000 --> 00:25:27,679
Speaker 1: rather ghastly and disturbed than now. We mentioned that a

445
00:25:27,680 --> 00:25:31,840
Speaker 1: lot of the older documented outbreaks of marine mucilage mentioned

446
00:25:31,840 --> 00:25:34,120
Speaker 1: in that two thousand nine paper in Plos one were

447
00:25:34,119 --> 00:25:36,959
Speaker 1: in the Adriatic Sea, which is of course different than

448
00:25:37,000 --> 00:25:40,640
Speaker 1: the Sea of marmara Um. Apparently there had not been

449
00:25:40,680 --> 00:25:45,080
Speaker 1: outbreaks of marine mucilage reported in Turkey before two thousand seven,

450
00:25:45,520 --> 00:25:48,800
Speaker 1: but now, of course that's where the big problem is situated.

451
00:25:48,840 --> 00:25:51,359
Speaker 1: It seems like some of the problem from the Adriatic

452
00:25:51,400 --> 00:25:54,800
Speaker 1: has been alleviated by some interventions that will talk about

453
00:25:54,880 --> 00:25:58,000
Speaker 1: later on. But this current outbreak of C SNOTS seems

454
00:25:58,040 --> 00:26:02,520
Speaker 1: to have begun in December of uh there's some of

455
00:26:02,560 --> 00:26:05,760
Speaker 1: the early signs of it where that fishermen were noticing

456
00:26:05,840 --> 00:26:08,520
Speaker 1: that it was preventing them from using their nets. I

457
00:26:08,560 --> 00:26:12,199
Speaker 1: saw this thing about the fisher nets mentioned in a

458
00:26:12,200 --> 00:26:13,760
Speaker 1: lot of articles, and I was trying to figure out

459
00:26:13,800 --> 00:26:17,680
Speaker 1: exactly how it makes the nets unusable. I couldn't nail

460
00:26:17,720 --> 00:26:20,880
Speaker 1: that down for certain, though. I think possibly what's going

461
00:26:20,920 --> 00:26:23,760
Speaker 1: on is it makes the nets too heavy, as it

462
00:26:23,880 --> 00:26:26,240
Speaker 1: like sort of clogs them up they don't really work,

463
00:26:26,480 --> 00:26:30,080
Speaker 1: or possibly it interferes with the ability of water to

464
00:26:30,200 --> 00:26:32,639
Speaker 1: pass freely through what's supposed to be the holes in

465
00:26:32,680 --> 00:26:35,760
Speaker 1: the nets. Yeah, you can easily imagine how it would

466
00:26:35,840 --> 00:26:40,720
Speaker 1: turn a net into a parachute made out of netting

467
00:26:40,720 --> 00:26:44,280
Speaker 1: and slime. Yeah. Gross. And another thing is I actually

468
00:26:44,280 --> 00:26:47,560
Speaker 1: saw this claim sited in an article for The Washington

469
00:26:47,640 --> 00:26:52,240
Speaker 1: Post by Antonio Neuri Farson, who said that it's also

470
00:26:52,359 --> 00:26:56,160
Speaker 1: sometimes making people wonder whether fish that are successfully caught

471
00:26:56,280 --> 00:27:00,119
Speaker 1: in the snot infested waters are safe to eat, And

472
00:27:00,160 --> 00:27:02,679
Speaker 1: there was no ruling on whether they were or not.

473
00:27:03,720 --> 00:27:05,679
Speaker 1: I don't know of any reason why they wouldn't be,

474
00:27:05,720 --> 00:27:08,679
Speaker 1: but at least said people were worried about that. But

475
00:27:08,960 --> 00:27:11,840
Speaker 1: it wasn't just people in the fishing industry who started

476
00:27:11,880 --> 00:27:14,359
Speaker 1: to notice this this problem with the new outbreak of

477
00:27:14,480 --> 00:27:18,919
Speaker 1: marine mucilage. Also it was noticed by by scientists. There

478
00:27:19,040 --> 00:27:21,680
Speaker 1: is one example cited in that article in The Guardian

479
00:27:21,760 --> 00:27:26,840
Speaker 1: by Selene Ugertash and this one um. This one refers

480
00:27:26,880 --> 00:27:30,399
Speaker 1: to a scientist named Dr barishe ot Salp who is

481
00:27:30,440 --> 00:27:36,320
Speaker 1: a marine biologist at the China cal A Osaki's mart University.

482
00:27:36,520 --> 00:27:40,159
Speaker 1: And uh this researcher was diving to look at corals

483
00:27:40,280 --> 00:27:44,320
Speaker 1: off the China cal A straight and notice the extent

484
00:27:44,440 --> 00:27:47,920
Speaker 1: of the s saliva underneath the water and points out

485
00:27:47,960 --> 00:27:51,520
Speaker 1: that it's especially dangerous to immobile animals along the bottom

486
00:27:51,560 --> 00:27:55,480
Speaker 1: of the ocean, like coral. Uh so so Dr Otsalpire

487
00:27:55,560 --> 00:28:00,520
Speaker 1: found that that the gold coral or Savalia savag leah

488
00:28:00,600 --> 00:28:06,879
Speaker 1: and the violescent sea whip or Paramurissa Clavada were the

489
00:28:06,920 --> 00:28:10,520
Speaker 1: most armed by the ceasno bloom. And then near the shoreline,

490
00:28:10,640 --> 00:28:14,040
Speaker 1: it of course threatens fish populations. There have been reports

491
00:28:14,080 --> 00:28:17,399
Speaker 1: that thousands of fish have turned up dead near coastal settlements.

492
00:28:17,640 --> 00:28:20,520
Speaker 1: So it's bad stuff for the marine life. So just

493
00:28:20,600 --> 00:28:24,440
Speaker 1: utter disruption here. It's it's you know, we recently talked

494
00:28:24,480 --> 00:28:30,080
Speaker 1: about the sargasm weed and and uh and large quantities

495
00:28:30,119 --> 00:28:33,159
Speaker 1: of that that that have at times become a problem

496
00:28:33,200 --> 00:28:36,600
Speaker 1: for coastal communities and and and actually creating some of

497
00:28:36,640 --> 00:28:39,000
Speaker 1: the same problems we've discussed here, making it difficult to

498
00:28:39,000 --> 00:28:41,440
Speaker 1: to to leave in a boat, that sort of thing,

499
00:28:41,520 --> 00:28:44,200
Speaker 1: making an unpleasant to visit the beach or be in

500
00:28:44,200 --> 00:28:49,680
Speaker 1: the water. But in those cases, I mean, the sargasm

501
00:28:49,840 --> 00:28:52,800
Speaker 1: is still an environment that things are thriving in. And

502
00:28:52,840 --> 00:28:56,040
Speaker 1: this this seems like more of a total disruption of

503
00:28:56,480 --> 00:28:59,920
Speaker 1: all of the of the marine environment at all levels. Well,

504
00:29:00,080 --> 00:29:03,120
Speaker 1: it turns out there's evidence that something is thriving in here,

505
00:29:03,160 --> 00:29:06,240
Speaker 1: but it's not very helpful for the marine life around it.

506
00:29:06,280 --> 00:29:09,280
Speaker 1: So get more to that in just a moment. Uh. First,

507
00:29:09,280 --> 00:29:11,400
Speaker 1: I guess I wanted to talk about like what actually

508
00:29:11,560 --> 00:29:14,320
Speaker 1: is this stuff physically, like what is it and how

509
00:29:14,400 --> 00:29:17,120
Speaker 1: is it formed? Uh So, here I'm turning back to

510
00:29:17,200 --> 00:29:19,240
Speaker 1: that study from two thousand nine in p o OS

511
00:29:19,320 --> 00:29:22,400
Speaker 1: one by den Ovarro at All, and the way they

512
00:29:22,440 --> 00:29:26,680
Speaker 1: explain it is that marine muselage starts with what's known

513
00:29:26,760 --> 00:29:29,800
Speaker 1: as marine snow. So I'm gonna read from their their

514
00:29:30,360 --> 00:29:34,720
Speaker 1: explanation in their introductory section here they define marine snow

515
00:29:34,800 --> 00:29:38,840
Speaker 1: as quote amorphous aggregates with the size ranging from a

516
00:29:38,840 --> 00:29:43,000
Speaker 1: few millimeters to several meters, and so these are just

517
00:29:43,120 --> 00:29:47,080
Speaker 1: little flex of organic material that form an important part

518
00:29:47,240 --> 00:29:50,800
Speaker 1: of of the ocean because of course it's marine snow

519
00:29:51,000 --> 00:29:55,480
Speaker 1: raining down from the the the trophic areas in the

520
00:29:55,520 --> 00:29:58,480
Speaker 1: top of the water column where you've got the photosynthesizing

521
00:29:58,560 --> 00:30:01,760
Speaker 1: organisms you know, they make in or g from from sunlight,

522
00:30:01,800 --> 00:30:05,160
Speaker 1: and then they die and float down or stuff they

523
00:30:05,200 --> 00:30:08,640
Speaker 1: produce comes off of them and floats down, and it

524
00:30:08,680 --> 00:30:12,240
Speaker 1: creates this sort of blizzard of organic material that rains

525
00:30:12,280 --> 00:30:15,960
Speaker 1: down below and feeds organisms that live much lower down

526
00:30:16,000 --> 00:30:18,840
Speaker 1: in the water column who are not able to produce

527
00:30:18,960 --> 00:30:22,480
Speaker 1: energy from sunlight. And of course that processes is as

528
00:30:22,480 --> 00:30:25,720
Speaker 1: they say, ubiquitous in the oceans of the world. It's everywhere.

529
00:30:26,840 --> 00:30:31,440
Speaker 1: But then they write, quote water columns stratification, So that's

530
00:30:31,520 --> 00:30:34,840
Speaker 1: the the forming of these layers in the water column.

531
00:30:34,920 --> 00:30:40,400
Speaker 1: Water column stratification under summer conditions favors the progressive coalescence

532
00:30:40,440 --> 00:30:46,880
Speaker 1: of small sized aggregates into large, massive sheets, thin layers, flocks,

533
00:30:46,920 --> 00:30:51,959
Speaker 1: and clouds, which are collectively known as marine mucilage. Mucilage

534
00:30:52,040 --> 00:30:57,040
Speaker 1: is a gelatinous evolving stage of marine snow which can

535
00:30:57,080 --> 00:31:01,520
Speaker 1: reach huge dimensions and cover areas of hundreds of kilometers

536
00:31:01,560 --> 00:31:04,880
Speaker 1: of coastline. Now we'll come back to the exact mechanics

537
00:31:04,920 --> 00:31:07,680
Speaker 1: of how those aggregates form in the water column. But yeah,

538
00:31:07,680 --> 00:31:10,400
Speaker 1: so what what what's going on here? Is that something

539
00:31:10,440 --> 00:31:13,800
Speaker 1: that would be marine snow just these little flex of

540
00:31:14,600 --> 00:31:18,600
Speaker 1: mucus or decomposing matter or or organic material of some

541
00:31:18,720 --> 00:31:22,240
Speaker 1: kind collect when there are certain conditions in the water

542
00:31:22,320 --> 00:31:25,400
Speaker 1: column and they start to stick together and form these

543
00:31:25,480 --> 00:31:30,000
Speaker 1: huge masses, and those masses become marine mucilage, again, the

544
00:31:30,120 --> 00:31:34,840
Speaker 1: gelatinous evolving stage of marine snow. So in terms of

545
00:31:34,880 --> 00:31:38,880
Speaker 1: its chemical composition, they say marine mucilage is quote is

546
00:31:39,000 --> 00:31:43,760
Speaker 1: made of exo polymeric compounds with highly colloidal properties that

547
00:31:43,800 --> 00:31:48,480
Speaker 1: are released by marine organisms through different processes including phytoplankton

548
00:31:48,680 --> 00:31:55,600
Speaker 1: exudation of photosynthetically derived carbohydrates produced under stressful conditions. Uh.

549
00:31:55,640 --> 00:31:58,160
Speaker 1: And then they say and through the death and composition

550
00:31:58,240 --> 00:32:01,520
Speaker 1: of cell wall debris. Such a release can be coupled

551
00:32:01,560 --> 00:32:05,560
Speaker 1: with a limited ability of prokaryotes to hydrolyze these exo

552
00:32:05,560 --> 00:32:10,240
Speaker 1: polymers by means of extracellular enzymes, leading to the release

553
00:32:10,280 --> 00:32:15,680
Speaker 1: and accumulation of large molecular weight compounds in the system. UH. So,

554
00:32:15,920 --> 00:32:19,600
Speaker 1: so a lot of this stuff is being produced by phytoplankton,

555
00:32:20,240 --> 00:32:24,320
Speaker 1: and it has a carbohydrate basis. Though another researcher that

556
00:32:24,360 --> 00:32:27,880
Speaker 1: I was reading was saying that the marine muselage ends

557
00:32:27,920 --> 00:32:32,400
Speaker 1: up being this combination of carbohydrates, proteins, and fat, which

558
00:32:32,440 --> 00:32:34,280
Speaker 1: is funny because it makes it like, you know, it's

559
00:32:34,320 --> 00:32:36,640
Speaker 1: the full gamut. It's like a gravy. It's got everything.

560
00:32:37,120 --> 00:32:41,840
Speaker 1: But apparently these these uh carbohydrates from phytoplankton are a

561
00:32:41,880 --> 00:32:44,320
Speaker 1: big part of it. And then we come back to

562
00:32:44,760 --> 00:32:47,200
Speaker 1: what you mentioned a minute ago about whether this would

563
00:32:47,240 --> 00:32:49,360
Speaker 1: be a habitat or not, so we know the sarcasm

564
00:32:49,440 --> 00:32:52,680
Speaker 1: seaweed is a is a habitat. Uh. The authors here

565
00:32:52,760 --> 00:32:57,200
Speaker 1: right quote these processes can be associated with viral infections

566
00:32:57,240 --> 00:33:02,560
Speaker 1: of prokaryotes and phytoplankton and the consequent cell license parentheses

567
00:33:02,680 --> 00:33:06,280
Speaker 1: viral shunt, which further contributes to release and accumulation of

568
00:33:06,280 --> 00:33:09,800
Speaker 1: dissolved organic matter in the water column. And what they

569
00:33:09,880 --> 00:33:13,360
Speaker 1: end up alleging is that the build up a marine

570
00:33:13,440 --> 00:33:20,000
Speaker 1: mucilage essentially forms a habitat for potentially pathogenic bacteria and viruses.

571
00:33:20,080 --> 00:33:23,400
Speaker 1: So E. Coli can thrive in these things, which can

572
00:33:23,560 --> 00:33:27,920
Speaker 1: lead to infections of other organisms in the water, which

573
00:33:27,960 --> 00:33:31,680
Speaker 1: can sort of create a feedback loop here. Oh, that's

574
00:33:31,800 --> 00:33:34,600
Speaker 1: that's not good at all. That's that's not the sort

575
00:33:34,600 --> 00:33:37,600
Speaker 1: of environment we're looking for. So I guess it's time

576
00:33:37,640 --> 00:33:39,680
Speaker 1: to talk about, like what are the causes, what what

577
00:33:39,840 --> 00:33:42,360
Speaker 1: is the process, and what are the causes that creates

578
00:33:42,400 --> 00:33:47,240
Speaker 1: this kind of unprecedented build up of of marine mucilage. Well,

579
00:33:47,360 --> 00:33:50,760
Speaker 1: having seen Ghostbusters too, I assume it has to do

580
00:33:50,840 --> 00:33:56,240
Speaker 1: with like negative uh, like like emotions building up in

581
00:33:56,280 --> 00:34:00,040
Speaker 1: an urban population that some museum in Istanbul imported a

582
00:34:00,080 --> 00:34:04,640
Speaker 1: painting of Vigo the Carpathian and uh yeah, and everybody

583
00:34:04,920 --> 00:34:07,120
Speaker 1: in the city started being mean to each other, and

584
00:34:07,160 --> 00:34:09,280
Speaker 1: then this is what you get all right case close.

585
00:34:09,280 --> 00:34:11,200
Speaker 1: We gotta do something about that that painting. Got to

586
00:34:11,239 --> 00:34:15,840
Speaker 1: shoot that painting with some some charged slime. Is that

587
00:34:15,880 --> 00:34:18,120
Speaker 1: what they do? And oh yeah they Oh that's right

588
00:34:18,160 --> 00:34:20,480
Speaker 1: in in Ghostbusters two. Yeah, they charged the slime with

589
00:34:20,560 --> 00:34:24,200
Speaker 1: good vibes by having everybody dance to that song and

590
00:34:24,280 --> 00:34:26,720
Speaker 1: they shoot it and they shoot it out of the guns. Yeah,

591
00:34:26,800 --> 00:34:31,000
Speaker 1: they defeat they defeat Vigo with good vibes. That was

592
00:34:31,200 --> 00:34:33,040
Speaker 1: that was you know, say what you about Ghostbusters too,

593
00:34:33,040 --> 00:34:37,080
Speaker 1: but it leaned into the slime, like I'm guessing Ackroyd

594
00:34:37,160 --> 00:34:39,200
Speaker 1: and Raymison they were like, well, what worked in the

595
00:34:39,200 --> 00:34:42,000
Speaker 1: first one. Oh the slime, the slime worked, Let's do

596
00:34:42,320 --> 00:34:45,320
Speaker 1: let's do even more slime. Ghostbusters two is not great,

597
00:34:45,360 --> 00:34:49,080
Speaker 1: but all the Vigo the Carpathian scenes are wonderful. Oh yeah,

598
00:34:49,120 --> 00:34:52,200
Speaker 1: I forget that name of that actor, Nicole talking to him.

599
00:34:52,400 --> 00:34:55,440
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he's a German actor that played that actual

600
00:34:55,760 --> 00:35:00,720
Speaker 1: Vigo Um a former boxer, kind of a man of mystery.

601
00:35:01,800 --> 00:35:04,120
Speaker 1: But he also pops up in John Carpenter's in the

602
00:35:04,160 --> 00:35:08,439
Speaker 1: Mouth of Madness, playing a distraught villager in some sort

603
00:35:08,440 --> 00:35:11,280
Speaker 1: of nightmare realm. And it's a it's it's a one

604
00:35:11,320 --> 00:35:15,080
Speaker 1: of many fun little cameos in that movie. Wilhelm von

605
00:35:15,200 --> 00:35:19,200
Speaker 1: Homburg was his name, and he was a wrestler, perhaps

606
00:35:19,200 --> 00:35:20,960
Speaker 1: a boxer too, but he was definitely a wrestler. He

607
00:35:21,040 --> 00:35:23,960
Speaker 1: was also in die Hard, Oh and die Hard. Oh?

608
00:35:24,080 --> 00:35:26,880
Speaker 1: Was he one of the villains? Oh? I almost I'm

609
00:35:26,920 --> 00:35:29,000
Speaker 1: almost certain he was. I don't think this is a

610
00:35:29,280 --> 00:35:31,399
Speaker 1: kind of guy who played anything. But wait, it wasn't

611
00:35:31,440 --> 00:35:34,480
Speaker 1: the police chief who was also in the Breakfast Club.

612
00:35:35,239 --> 00:35:37,600
Speaker 1: I can't imagine this guy ever played police chief, not

613
00:35:37,600 --> 00:35:40,359
Speaker 1: not in the US. Anyway, Maybe he played police chief

614
00:35:40,360 --> 00:35:41,840
Speaker 1: in him. I could see him playing a cop like

615
00:35:41,880 --> 00:35:44,440
Speaker 1: in a German show. So it's possible. No, I was

616
00:35:44,520 --> 00:35:47,160
Speaker 1: joking it was not that guy, don't I forget his name,

617
00:35:47,200 --> 00:35:52,319
Speaker 1: but that guy's that guy. Everybody knows that guy. Yeah, okay, anyway, sorry,

618
00:35:52,320 --> 00:35:54,520
Speaker 1: we gotta come back to So the causes the causes

619
00:35:54,600 --> 00:35:57,640
Speaker 1: of marine muselage um, so across everything I was reading,

620
00:35:57,640 --> 00:36:02,359
Speaker 1: there are three main causes that have been uh put

621
00:36:02,400 --> 00:36:06,600
Speaker 1: forth as the probable primary explanations of what's going on

622
00:36:06,760 --> 00:36:10,320
Speaker 1: with this with this c SnO outbreak. And these causes

623
00:36:10,360 --> 00:36:12,680
Speaker 1: are and I'll explain each of these as we go on.

624
00:36:12,960 --> 00:36:19,480
Speaker 1: Warmer temperatures, calm weather, and specific kinds of water pollution. Now,

625
00:36:19,480 --> 00:36:22,000
Speaker 1: first of all, I mentioned warm temperatures. Why would warm

626
00:36:22,040 --> 00:36:28,440
Speaker 1: temperatures contribute Well, one reason is that phytoplankton populations apparently

627
00:36:28,520 --> 00:36:32,600
Speaker 1: grow more at higher temperatures, and phytoplankton seems to be

628
00:36:33,080 --> 00:36:36,160
Speaker 1: one of the main or the main source of of

629
00:36:36,239 --> 00:36:39,520
Speaker 1: this marine mucilage build up. And so of course ocean

630
00:36:39,560 --> 00:36:43,239
Speaker 1: waters are getting warmer. That's consistent with climate change. One

631
00:36:43,520 --> 00:36:47,000
Speaker 1: Turkish researcher I was reading was cited in that Washington

632
00:36:47,080 --> 00:36:49,840
Speaker 1: Post article mentioned that the Sea of Marmora was several

633
00:36:49,880 --> 00:36:52,880
Speaker 1: degrees warmer than average after a very mild winter, And

634
00:36:52,920 --> 00:36:56,240
Speaker 1: of course, uh, there's just continuous warming of the oceans

635
00:36:56,320 --> 00:36:59,279
Speaker 1: due to climate change. But then also you've got the

636
00:36:59,320 --> 00:37:05,239
Speaker 1: idea of particular kinds of pollution. So one thing that

637
00:37:05,400 --> 00:37:09,480
Speaker 1: is definitely true is you don't want to overfeed the sea.

638
00:37:10,040 --> 00:37:13,560
Speaker 1: That can cause really bad things to happen downstream in

639
00:37:13,600 --> 00:37:17,280
Speaker 1: the ocean. Uh. These explosions of sea saliva in Turkey

640
00:37:17,280 --> 00:37:20,359
Speaker 1: are probably caused, like I said, mostly by phytoplankton, which

641
00:37:20,360 --> 00:37:25,080
Speaker 1: are microscopic marine algae, and they are primary autotrophs in

642
00:37:25,120 --> 00:37:27,720
Speaker 1: the waters, so they are sort of the bottom level

643
00:37:27,920 --> 00:37:32,799
Speaker 1: of the food chain within ocean ecosystems. Their photosynthesizers, they're

644
00:37:32,840 --> 00:37:34,719
Speaker 1: they're the base of the food chain and the oceans,

645
00:37:34,719 --> 00:37:38,560
Speaker 1: but also producers of oxygen that allows water dwelling animals

646
00:37:38,600 --> 00:37:43,040
Speaker 1: to breathe. But when phytoplankton population surge, they can have

647
00:37:43,200 --> 00:37:48,240
Speaker 1: devastating effects on the ecosystems around them. And one way

648
00:37:48,239 --> 00:37:53,279
Speaker 1: that phytoplankton populations can surge and UH and existing phytoplankton

649
00:37:53,360 --> 00:37:57,200
Speaker 1: can produce an excess of mucus is when there are

650
00:37:57,320 --> 00:38:03,080
Speaker 1: certain imbalances of nutrient ants that are injected into natural waterways,

651
00:38:03,440 --> 00:38:06,239
Speaker 1: and specifically what I've seen called out here are the

652
00:38:06,360 --> 00:38:10,640
Speaker 1: nutrients nitrogen and phosphorus. Now, why would the Sea of

653
00:38:10,719 --> 00:38:14,840
Speaker 1: Marmara have especially high levels of nitrogen and phosphorus. Well,

654
00:38:15,000 --> 00:38:18,000
Speaker 1: first of all, it is fed directly from the Black Sea,

655
00:38:18,040 --> 00:38:21,560
Speaker 1: which tends to be nutrient rich anyway, but it's also

656
00:38:21,719 --> 00:38:26,040
Speaker 1: fed by wastewater runoff from like twenty million people, which

657
00:38:26,040 --> 00:38:31,880
Speaker 1: would include untreated wastewater so like like sewage, but also

658
00:38:32,080 --> 00:38:38,040
Speaker 1: agricultural runoff which contains things like fertilizers. This can lead

659
00:38:38,080 --> 00:38:41,279
Speaker 1: to a chain reaction in which the phytoplankton sort of

660
00:38:41,360 --> 00:38:46,040
Speaker 1: become stressed, and under conditions of stress they exude mucus

661
00:38:46,400 --> 00:38:49,279
Speaker 1: or this this mucus like material that of course can

662
00:38:49,400 --> 00:38:52,960
Speaker 1: lead to these runaway conditions. Now, how exactly does this

663
00:38:53,000 --> 00:38:56,280
Speaker 1: process happen, Well, it's actually described very well in that

664
00:38:56,280 --> 00:38:59,600
Speaker 1: that Sarah Jong article in The Atlantic from from from

665
00:38:59,719 --> 00:39:03,080
Speaker 1: June twenty one. So she backs up to the starting

666
00:39:03,120 --> 00:39:05,720
Speaker 1: point that we already talked about with with marine snow.

667
00:39:05,760 --> 00:39:09,040
Speaker 1: You've got marine snow already in the water, but then

668
00:39:09,280 --> 00:39:13,920
Speaker 1: you've got these imbalances of nutrients that are largely caused

669
00:39:14,000 --> 00:39:17,720
Speaker 1: by uh, the untreated waste water and the agricultural runoff

670
00:39:17,760 --> 00:39:21,279
Speaker 1: that may contain fertilizers, and this leads the phytoplankton in

671
00:39:21,320 --> 00:39:25,800
Speaker 1: the water to produce copious mucus. The excess of mucus

672
00:39:25,880 --> 00:39:30,920
Speaker 1: then accumulates into these these things we mentioned earlier that

673
00:39:31,000 --> 00:39:34,960
Speaker 1: we're sometimes called stringers, the you know, these snot like strings,

674
00:39:35,040 --> 00:39:38,120
Speaker 1: and then that accumulates into clouds and then ends up

675
00:39:38,440 --> 00:39:42,799
Speaker 1: somehow floating up onto the surface becoming these sheets. Now,

676
00:39:42,920 --> 00:39:46,600
Speaker 1: one question is why do warm water and calm weather

677
00:39:46,640 --> 00:39:50,920
Speaker 1: conditions also contribute to marine mucilage build up well. It

678
00:39:50,920 --> 00:39:54,720
Speaker 1: goes like this. In the warmer months, the sun heats

679
00:39:54,840 --> 00:39:57,840
Speaker 1: up the top layer of the water column near the surface,

680
00:39:57,920 --> 00:40:02,560
Speaker 1: which causes increased stre ratification. So the warm layer of

681
00:40:02,600 --> 00:40:06,160
Speaker 1: water above the cold layers of water below, and the

682
00:40:06,239 --> 00:40:09,760
Speaker 1: cold layer of water is denser than the warm layer

683
00:40:09,800 --> 00:40:13,520
Speaker 1: of water, and salinity also affects. The saltier water is

684
00:40:13,600 --> 00:40:16,600
Speaker 1: denser than less salty water, which is why in really

685
00:40:16,640 --> 00:40:19,240
Speaker 1: salty bodies of water, like the dead Sea, it's easier

686
00:40:19,280 --> 00:40:21,760
Speaker 1: for things to float. It's because the water is denser,

687
00:40:22,160 --> 00:40:26,040
Speaker 1: but also cold water is denser. So mucus forms in

688
00:40:26,080 --> 00:40:29,400
Speaker 1: the top layer of the water where the photosynthesizing organisms,

689
00:40:29,400 --> 00:40:32,399
Speaker 1: the phytoplankton, are up near the top of the water.

690
00:40:32,520 --> 00:40:36,000
Speaker 1: They produced the mucus. After it's produced, the mucus starts

691
00:40:36,040 --> 00:40:40,200
Speaker 1: to sink, but because of the water column stratification, at

692
00:40:40,239 --> 00:40:44,160
Speaker 1: some point it hits dense cool water and stop sinking.

693
00:40:44,280 --> 00:40:47,920
Speaker 1: It just hangs around. And as it hangs around, it

694
00:40:48,000 --> 00:40:52,759
Speaker 1: starts to aggregate together and accumulate into these strings or clouds.

695
00:40:53,520 --> 00:40:55,640
Speaker 1: And here's where the third element comes in. I mentioned

696
00:40:55,880 --> 00:40:59,959
Speaker 1: I mentioned warm temperatures, the pollution, but also the calm

697
00:41:00,200 --> 00:41:04,920
Speaker 1: weather winds, and storms could normally come in to rough

698
00:41:05,000 --> 00:41:08,440
Speaker 1: up the waters and essentially tear up, churn up, forming

699
00:41:08,560 --> 00:41:11,480
Speaker 1: strings and clouds of mucus. But if the weather is

700
00:41:11,600 --> 00:41:15,640
Speaker 1: especially calm, that doesn't happen. For example, we talked about

701
00:41:15,640 --> 00:41:19,000
Speaker 1: how this was historically observed in the Adriatic Sea. The

702
00:41:19,040 --> 00:41:23,040
Speaker 1: Adriatic Sea tends to be relatively calm. Then after that

703
00:41:23,160 --> 00:41:27,279
Speaker 1: genres there are bacteria within all of this mucilage that

704
00:41:27,480 --> 00:41:31,560
Speaker 1: start to decompose it, and as they decompose it, they

705
00:41:31,640 --> 00:41:36,680
Speaker 1: release gases, forming bubbles within this accumulated matrix of mucus,

706
00:41:36,719 --> 00:41:38,880
Speaker 1: and then it floats to the top of the water

707
00:41:39,360 --> 00:41:43,719
Speaker 1: and collects in sheets on the surface. And one astounding

708
00:41:43,760 --> 00:41:47,520
Speaker 1: fact that Young mentioned is that quote in the Adriatic Sea,

709
00:41:47,840 --> 00:41:50,880
Speaker 1: the arm of the Mediterranean, just east of the Italian Peninsula,

710
00:41:51,040 --> 00:41:54,160
Speaker 1: the floating mucus can dry and toughen in the sun.

711
00:41:54,800 --> 00:42:05,279
Speaker 1: Seagulls are known to walk on it. So one of

712
00:42:05,320 --> 00:42:07,120
Speaker 1: the things about this, I mean, we're talking about this,

713
00:42:07,200 --> 00:42:12,359
Speaker 1: this overabundance of slime caused by these the by by

714
00:42:12,440 --> 00:42:15,480
Speaker 1: pollution changes in the environment. I mean it really you

715
00:42:15,520 --> 00:42:20,280
Speaker 1: really get the sense of like the mass uzing of

716
00:42:20,280 --> 00:42:23,799
Speaker 1: of the ocean's pus, you know, like the the the

717
00:42:23,960 --> 00:42:27,160
Speaker 1: using of a massive infection. Yeah, that's funny. One of

718
00:42:27,160 --> 00:42:29,080
Speaker 1: the articles I read it, though I don't recall which

719
00:42:29,120 --> 00:42:32,279
Speaker 1: one did cite a marine biologist, I think, or it

720
00:42:32,320 --> 00:42:34,440
Speaker 1: was some researcher in this area who was saying that

721
00:42:34,480 --> 00:42:37,160
Speaker 1: it's sort of like the ocean has the flu, and

722
00:42:37,239 --> 00:42:39,520
Speaker 1: this is this is the mucus coming out of its nose.

723
00:42:39,600 --> 00:42:43,279
Speaker 1: You know, it reflects a sort of general sickness in

724
00:42:43,320 --> 00:42:46,960
Speaker 1: the ecosystem due to h due to pollution, due to

725
00:42:47,080 --> 00:42:50,799
Speaker 1: changing temperatures, and and all that adding up together. Now,

726
00:42:50,840 --> 00:42:52,840
Speaker 1: of course it comes to the question of can anything

727
00:42:52,920 --> 00:42:56,520
Speaker 1: be done about this, about this cease not the plague

728
00:42:56,520 --> 00:42:58,920
Speaker 1: of mucus here. There are a few sort of levels

729
00:42:58,960 --> 00:43:01,719
Speaker 1: at which you could answer that question. One is, well,

730
00:43:01,719 --> 00:43:04,439
Speaker 1: can anything be done about it once it is here,

731
00:43:04,600 --> 00:43:08,080
Speaker 1: once it's all collected. I've read that Turkish authorities are

732
00:43:08,120 --> 00:43:12,200
Speaker 1: trying some possible solutions. In that that Washington Post article

733
00:43:12,239 --> 00:43:16,440
Speaker 1: I mentioned by Antonio Nuri Farson. She mentions that they

734
00:43:16,480 --> 00:43:19,680
Speaker 1: they have floated the idea of pun not intended of

735
00:43:20,040 --> 00:43:23,239
Speaker 1: dredging the seafloor as a way to possibly try to

736
00:43:23,239 --> 00:43:25,920
Speaker 1: remove some of it that has settled on on the bottom.

737
00:43:26,719 --> 00:43:29,360
Speaker 1: But they're also just vacuuming it up in the surface

738
00:43:29,440 --> 00:43:31,200
Speaker 1: from the surface, and we've seen that in some of

739
00:43:31,200 --> 00:43:33,920
Speaker 1: the images we talked about earlier, these photographs of these

740
00:43:34,200 --> 00:43:37,360
Speaker 1: workers with hoses just trying to suck up the slime

741
00:43:37,480 --> 00:43:41,160
Speaker 1: from near the coasts. Uh Farson writes, quote in is

742
00:43:41,239 --> 00:43:44,600
Speaker 1: mit workers have laboriously collected more than a hundred and

743
00:43:44,640 --> 00:43:47,200
Speaker 1: ten tons of the mucus, which was sent to an

744
00:43:47,200 --> 00:43:51,080
Speaker 1: incinerator for disposal. I wonder what it smells like downwind

745
00:43:51,120 --> 00:43:55,040
Speaker 1: of that incinerator. What what is the smell of grilled snot?

746
00:43:55,640 --> 00:43:58,239
Speaker 1: Oh man, this would be a good one for the ghostbusters,

747
00:43:58,320 --> 00:44:00,360
Speaker 1: right because it's this is the smell of having just

748
00:44:00,440 --> 00:44:04,480
Speaker 1: fired a proton pack uh into some sort of a

749
00:44:04,560 --> 00:44:10,720
Speaker 1: sline ectoplasm based organism or spiritual being fried ghost. Yes.

750
00:44:12,239 --> 00:44:14,440
Speaker 1: So there are you know, some things that people are

751
00:44:14,480 --> 00:44:17,239
Speaker 1: that they're trying to do, Turkish authorities are trying to do.

752
00:44:17,960 --> 00:44:20,480
Speaker 1: Now that this problem has already happened, the bigger question

753
00:44:20,520 --> 00:44:22,719
Speaker 1: would be how do you prevent it from happening in

754
00:44:22,800 --> 00:44:26,680
Speaker 1: future seasons. So one of the big things, obviously is

755
00:44:26,760 --> 00:44:30,880
Speaker 1: reducing pollution, reducing wastewater runoff into the Sea of Marmara,

756
00:44:31,120 --> 00:44:34,080
Speaker 1: reducing it into any c where this could happen um

757
00:44:34,280 --> 00:44:37,200
Speaker 1: and that would prevent these this build up, this imbalance

758
00:44:37,239 --> 00:44:40,120
Speaker 1: of nutrients that sets off this chain reaction by feeding

759
00:44:40,120 --> 00:44:43,520
Speaker 1: the phytoplankton like that, and there is some indication that

760
00:44:43,520 --> 00:44:47,160
Speaker 1: that could work. According to Jong's article, there is there's

761
00:44:47,200 --> 00:44:49,640
Speaker 1: every reason to think halting pollution could actually make a

762
00:44:49,680 --> 00:44:53,160
Speaker 1: difference in the following years because of what we've already

763
00:44:53,160 --> 00:44:56,239
Speaker 1: seen work in the Adriatic. See you remember the Adriatic

764
00:44:56,400 --> 00:44:59,680
Speaker 1: is where where these older reports from the eighteenth century

765
00:44:59,760 --> 00:45:03,520
Speaker 1: of the mare Sporko had taken place. And John Wrights

766
00:45:03,600 --> 00:45:07,040
Speaker 1: quote in the Adriatic uh Pusque Doo says, and that's

767
00:45:07,040 --> 00:45:08,799
Speaker 1: a researcher who was one of the authors of that

768
00:45:08,840 --> 00:45:12,520
Speaker 1: two thousand nine article, says that mucilage outbreaks have died

769
00:45:12,560 --> 00:45:15,200
Speaker 1: down since Italy began cleaning up the waste water that

770
00:45:15,239 --> 00:45:18,000
Speaker 1: flows into it. The sea has returned to what looks

771
00:45:18,040 --> 00:45:21,160
Speaker 1: like a healthier, less slimy normal. So it looks like

772
00:45:21,280 --> 00:45:23,960
Speaker 1: this sort of worked in the Adriatic, just stop polluting

773
00:45:24,000 --> 00:45:26,719
Speaker 1: the water as much. But there have been other things

774
00:45:26,880 --> 00:45:30,000
Speaker 1: that that have been mentioned in that that Guardian article

775
00:45:30,120 --> 00:45:32,920
Speaker 1: I was talking about earlier. It cites a researcher, damed

776
00:45:33,120 --> 00:45:36,720
Speaker 1: Dr nes leehan Os Deli Say, who is a marine

777
00:45:36,719 --> 00:45:42,560
Speaker 1: biologist at Istanbul University, and this researcher also mentions over fishing.

778
00:45:42,719 --> 00:45:47,239
Speaker 1: Stop over fishing, because fishing removes organisms that prey on

779
00:45:47,280 --> 00:45:50,280
Speaker 1: the phytoplankton and help keep it from getting out of control.

780
00:45:50,360 --> 00:45:51,759
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like how you know, you don't

781
00:45:51,800 --> 00:45:53,640
Speaker 1: want to take the wolves out of the park, right

782
00:45:53,840 --> 00:45:56,840
Speaker 1: because you could get an overabundance of prey animals. You

783
00:45:56,880 --> 00:45:59,640
Speaker 1: also don't want to take the fish that feed on

784
00:45:59,719 --> 00:46:03,879
Speaker 1: these autotrophs, take too many of them out of the waterways, right,

785
00:46:04,200 --> 00:46:07,720
Speaker 1: So so yeah, don't So we need to to not overfish,

786
00:46:07,880 --> 00:46:10,960
Speaker 1: We need to cut down on the amount of pollutants

787
00:46:11,000 --> 00:46:14,400
Speaker 1: that are leaking into these these bodies of water. And

788
00:46:14,840 --> 00:46:16,279
Speaker 1: uh well, I mean on top of that too, we

789
00:46:16,320 --> 00:46:19,560
Speaker 1: already pointed to climate change being an issue as well, right,

790
00:46:19,600 --> 00:46:21,800
Speaker 1: And as with so many issues, you end up seeing

791
00:46:21,800 --> 00:46:23,759
Speaker 1: and like, why is this weird thing happening in the

792
00:46:23,800 --> 00:46:27,680
Speaker 1: ocean right now? It seems like a large contributing macroscopic

793
00:46:27,719 --> 00:46:30,160
Speaker 1: factor in the background. Is climate change? Probably you know,

794
00:46:30,200 --> 00:46:33,799
Speaker 1: as the as the waters warm, that changes just all

795
00:46:33,880 --> 00:46:38,000
Speaker 1: kinds of complex interactions and the ecosystems, and so of

796
00:46:38,040 --> 00:46:41,239
Speaker 1: course climate change is really the the ultimate battle we

797
00:46:41,280 --> 00:46:43,279
Speaker 1: have to fight in the long term. But so I

798
00:46:43,320 --> 00:46:45,600
Speaker 1: guess that does it for me with the the specific

799
00:46:45,600 --> 00:46:48,920
Speaker 1: outbreak of marine mucilage in in the Sea of Marmara,

800
00:46:49,000 --> 00:46:51,840
Speaker 1: and I guess originally I was just captivated by that

801
00:46:52,080 --> 00:46:54,400
Speaker 1: that article in The Atlantic and the photographs that I

802
00:46:54,440 --> 00:46:57,160
Speaker 1: saw along with it, but it also this subject got

803
00:46:57,200 --> 00:47:00,560
Speaker 1: me thinking about how how slime, mucus and snot or

804
00:47:00,600 --> 00:47:03,919
Speaker 1: as we said earlier, fairly loose terms, and not every

805
00:47:04,000 --> 00:47:06,440
Speaker 1: kind of snot in the sea is identical or has

806
00:47:06,480 --> 00:47:09,560
Speaker 1: the same biochemical origin and when So when I was

807
00:47:09,600 --> 00:47:12,239
Speaker 1: searching around for other reports of different kinds of C.

808
00:47:12,480 --> 00:47:15,200
Speaker 1: Snot quote, one that I came across was a totally

809
00:47:15,239 --> 00:47:18,640
Speaker 1: different substance that was referred to by researchers with this term.

810
00:47:18,719 --> 00:47:21,520
Speaker 1: That was in the Gulf of Mexico following the Deep

811
00:47:21,560 --> 00:47:25,200
Speaker 1: Water Horizon oil spill. Yeah, yeah, this is the perfect

812
00:47:25,200 --> 00:47:28,560
Speaker 1: place to go, you know, having just discussed the horrors

813
00:47:28,560 --> 00:47:31,960
Speaker 1: of the oil age, um the ongoing horrors of the

814
00:47:32,000 --> 00:47:36,040
Speaker 1: oil age, because yeah, the deep Water Horizon spill gave

815
00:47:36,120 --> 00:47:39,240
Speaker 1: us a kind of a particular type of of slime,

816
00:47:39,920 --> 00:47:42,920
Speaker 1: so the deep Water Horizons spilled to refresh everyone. This was,

817
00:47:43,000 --> 00:47:46,120
Speaker 1: by many estimates, the largest marine oil spill in history.

818
00:47:46,440 --> 00:47:49,880
Speaker 1: It occurred on April in the Gulf of Mexico on

819
00:47:49,920 --> 00:47:54,759
Speaker 1: the BP operated Macondo Prospect Macondo Oil Prospect, and it

820
00:47:55,160 --> 00:47:59,080
Speaker 1: dumped an estimated four point nine million barrels I've also

821
00:47:59,120 --> 00:48:01,880
Speaker 1: seen I think the were earlier estimates four point one

822
00:48:01,960 --> 00:48:06,520
Speaker 1: million barrels UH into the Gulf of Mexico, in addition

823
00:48:06,560 --> 00:48:10,040
Speaker 1: to an estimated three hundred and sixty three thousand tons

824
00:48:10,040 --> 00:48:14,840
Speaker 1: of natural gas. It's a sort of unimaginable scale. Yeah,

825
00:48:15,200 --> 00:48:17,719
Speaker 1: and um, you know, as the name implies here, the

826
00:48:17,760 --> 00:48:21,319
Speaker 1: deep Water Horizon operated in deep water just beyond the

827
00:48:21,400 --> 00:48:24,879
Speaker 1: edge of the continental shelf. And we were both looking

828
00:48:24,920 --> 00:48:28,400
Speaker 1: at a paper from from Mark Shrope that was in

829
00:48:28,520 --> 00:48:32,080
Speaker 1: Nature back in eleven so in the you know, this

830
00:48:32,160 --> 00:48:35,640
Speaker 1: came out right afterwards. This was in the immediate period

831
00:48:35,719 --> 00:48:38,439
Speaker 1: of of of research, just a lot of researchers getting

832
00:48:38,440 --> 00:48:40,800
Speaker 1: involved in trying to figure out what is the damage.

833
00:48:41,120 --> 00:48:43,480
Speaker 1: You know that I think it was pretty quickly we

834
00:48:43,560 --> 00:48:47,600
Speaker 1: realized it was extensive, but but exactly what was the

835
00:48:47,680 --> 00:48:51,480
Speaker 1: damage to to the environment. And this article, which you

836
00:48:51,480 --> 00:48:53,840
Speaker 1: can look up it's available for free online, is titled

837
00:48:53,880 --> 00:48:59,240
Speaker 1: deep Wounds and and in that article, shrope Um points

838
00:48:59,280 --> 00:49:03,160
Speaker 1: out the collection and burning efforts UH only took care

839
00:49:03,200 --> 00:49:05,799
Speaker 1: of an estimated quarter of the liquid from the well.

840
00:49:06,120 --> 00:49:08,719
Speaker 1: The rest of it was dispersed into the sea in

841
00:49:08,960 --> 00:49:13,080
Speaker 1: small droplets uh in tar balls that formed some of

842
00:49:13,120 --> 00:49:16,320
Speaker 1: it was chemically dispersed, and some of it evaporated and

843
00:49:17,040 --> 00:49:20,640
Speaker 1: or dissolved. But short rights that researchers began to realize

844
00:49:20,640 --> 00:49:23,759
Speaker 1: pretty quickly that while some of the uh you know,

845
00:49:23,840 --> 00:49:27,240
Speaker 1: the surface shallow and coastal damage was the most obvious,

846
00:49:27,520 --> 00:49:31,000
Speaker 1: deep environments were hit really hard as well. The researchers

847
00:49:31,000 --> 00:49:33,920
Speaker 1: he talked to in the article describe a pervasive layer

848
00:49:34,000 --> 00:49:38,600
Speaker 1: of putrefied sediment containing dead sediment dwellers, you know, different

849
00:49:38,680 --> 00:49:42,240
Speaker 1: organisms and worms and the like, dead jellyfish from layers

850
00:49:42,280 --> 00:49:46,080
Speaker 1: above that had died and had drifted down and also

851
00:49:46,440 --> 00:49:50,560
Speaker 1: highly disrupted um or even just you know, council canceled

852
00:49:50,560 --> 00:49:54,400
Speaker 1: out microbial activity, so the result was kind of a

853
00:49:55,280 --> 00:49:58,680
Speaker 1: necro sludge. They did find some things that were still

854
00:49:58,719 --> 00:50:02,239
Speaker 1: technically alive in it. They pointed to some snails in particular,

855
00:50:02,480 --> 00:50:05,160
Speaker 1: but the snails were no longer moving. They weren't behaving

856
00:50:05,600 --> 00:50:09,400
Speaker 1: like living snails anymore, which just makes it all the

857
00:50:09,480 --> 00:50:11,920
Speaker 1: more creepy, and so of course it as a completely

858
00:50:11,960 --> 00:50:14,920
Speaker 1: different original cause. But this does remind me of the

859
00:50:14,960 --> 00:50:19,320
Speaker 1: images of the the sludge or the slime or the

860
00:50:19,400 --> 00:50:23,239
Speaker 1: mucus from these phytoplankton blooms settling down on the sea

861
00:50:23,280 --> 00:50:27,200
Speaker 1: floor in the Sea of Marmara and smothering organisms there. Yeah,

862
00:50:27,239 --> 00:50:30,359
Speaker 1: some of the descriptions were also sounded a lot like

863
00:50:30,440 --> 00:50:33,880
Speaker 1: what we're looking at here. Who's described as looking like cauliflower,

864
00:50:34,280 --> 00:50:39,440
Speaker 1: you know, as having this kind of this ghastly appearance. Now,

865
00:50:40,080 --> 00:50:43,600
Speaker 1: Scientists from the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill and Ecosystem

866
00:50:43,680 --> 00:50:46,160
Speaker 1: Science Conference said that as much as one third of

867
00:50:46,200 --> 00:50:48,960
Speaker 1: the oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster may have mixed

868
00:50:48,960 --> 00:50:53,000
Speaker 1: with deep ocean sediments and and here it risks lasting

869
00:50:53,080 --> 00:50:57,760
Speaker 1: damage to the two ecosystems and commercial fisheries. Researchers were reporting,

870
00:50:57,920 --> 00:51:02,239
Speaker 1: for instance, normally pink and lighter jelly's uh from further

871
00:51:02,320 --> 00:51:04,960
Speaker 1: up in the water column. They were found to be

872
00:51:05,080 --> 00:51:08,319
Speaker 1: black or brown, and so yeah, that the damage from

873
00:51:08,360 --> 00:51:10,560
Speaker 1: an event on this scale was this thought to extend

874
00:51:10,600 --> 00:51:14,040
Speaker 1: just throughout the water column. So certainly the surface, certainly

875
00:51:14,480 --> 00:51:18,080
Speaker 1: um on the on the the shore, but also deep down,

876
00:51:18,680 --> 00:51:21,560
Speaker 1: right down to the very bottom. Everything about that is

877
00:51:21,920 --> 00:51:25,840
Speaker 1: a truly sad and devastating story. But thinking about biological mucus,

878
00:51:25,880 --> 00:51:28,160
Speaker 1: I I do kind of come back to, despite you know,

879
00:51:28,440 --> 00:51:30,720
Speaker 1: all of the grossness that we've been talking about throughout

880
00:51:30,719 --> 00:51:35,280
Speaker 1: the middle of this episode, a kind of wonder um

881
00:51:35,320 --> 00:51:41,080
Speaker 1: about the ways that that tiny, you know, microscopically invisibly

882
00:51:41,120 --> 00:51:47,080
Speaker 1: microscopic organisms can so quickly, uh change the whole environment

883
00:51:47,280 --> 00:51:52,200
Speaker 1: with with just like releasing mucus or mucus like substances.

884
00:51:52,239 --> 00:51:55,400
Speaker 1: Obviously the effects are bad, but in a strange way,

885
00:51:55,440 --> 00:51:58,719
Speaker 1: I find something conceptually kind of beautiful about it, in

886
00:51:58,760 --> 00:52:01,440
Speaker 1: a way like the sky City comes first, Like if

887
00:52:01,480 --> 00:52:05,720
Speaker 1: you had a scenario, whether I a mythological creator, god

888
00:52:05,800 --> 00:52:08,880
Speaker 1: or goddess is sort of toy in around with different

889
00:52:08,920 --> 00:52:11,400
Speaker 1: ideas and and you know, one day they have something

890
00:52:11,520 --> 00:52:13,799
Speaker 1: and uh, one of their attendance comes and so what

891
00:52:13,840 --> 00:52:14,960
Speaker 1: do you what do you got there? And they're like, oh,

892
00:52:14,960 --> 00:52:17,440
Speaker 1: it's it's great. It's um, it's look at it. I

893
00:52:17,480 --> 00:52:19,319
Speaker 1: think I'm gonna call it slime. I'm gonna base an

894
00:52:19,440 --> 00:52:21,640
Speaker 1: entire ecosystem on this stuff. What do you think the

895
00:52:21,760 --> 00:52:24,319
Speaker 1: whole planet? And they're like, yeah, yeah, let's do it.

896
00:52:24,520 --> 00:52:27,080
Speaker 1: The mucus is the life. Yeah. I mean, maybe that's

897
00:52:27,080 --> 00:52:31,360
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why slime based creatures and monsters

898
00:52:31,440 --> 00:52:35,560
Speaker 1: sometimes resonate is that um is that we we realize

899
00:52:35,600 --> 00:52:38,400
Speaker 1: that this isn't this is this is life. You know,

900
00:52:38,560 --> 00:52:40,719
Speaker 1: this is this is a hallmark of life. That's why

901
00:52:40,760 --> 00:52:43,880
Speaker 1: the blob is is grim. That's why various slime creatures

902
00:52:43,880 --> 00:52:47,440
Speaker 1: are grim, because they're just an exaggeration of what we

903
00:52:47,520 --> 00:52:50,960
Speaker 1: see when we look closely at the world around us.

904
00:52:51,440 --> 00:52:54,080
Speaker 1: Maybe the same way that people watch crime shows and

905
00:52:54,160 --> 00:52:57,440
Speaker 1: anti heroes and all that and see people behaving badly

906
00:52:57,640 --> 00:53:00,319
Speaker 1: and kind of secretly see elements of the our own

907
00:53:00,320 --> 00:53:03,560
Speaker 1: personality that they kind of keep submerged throughout life but

908
00:53:03,680 --> 00:53:05,960
Speaker 1: are coming through in this character on the screen or

909
00:53:05,960 --> 00:53:08,719
Speaker 1: in the book. I wonder if it's similar like that,

910
00:53:08,760 --> 00:53:11,920
Speaker 1: but at a biological level. With with slime monsters, you

911
00:53:12,000 --> 00:53:14,200
Speaker 1: kind of you see that part of yourself. You kind

912
00:53:14,200 --> 00:53:17,080
Speaker 1: of see like, oh, this mass of floating mucus in

913
00:53:17,080 --> 00:53:18,840
Speaker 1: a way. That's kind of what That's what I am.

914
00:53:19,040 --> 00:53:21,120
Speaker 1: That's a big part of me. Oh man, you know,

915
00:53:21,160 --> 00:53:24,799
Speaker 1: I'm I'm smelling a new genre of podcast now. I

916
00:53:24,800 --> 00:53:28,759
Speaker 1: think we'll call it true slime, true slie. Yes, we'll

917
00:53:28,760 --> 00:53:32,000
Speaker 1: be pioneers. Yeah, that's got to already exist. Somebody has

918
00:53:32,000 --> 00:53:35,520
Speaker 1: already got a true slime and we'll go and like

919
00:53:35,560 --> 00:53:37,560
Speaker 1: I said, there's enough there. I think you could make

920
00:53:37,600 --> 00:53:41,360
Speaker 1: a podcast call it True Slime and just talk about

921
00:53:41,480 --> 00:53:44,440
Speaker 1: something slime related in every episode and you'd be good

922
00:53:44,480 --> 00:53:47,319
Speaker 1: to go. God, that sounds like it was made for me.

923
00:53:47,840 --> 00:53:50,040
Speaker 1: All right, Well we're gonna go ahead and close the

924
00:53:50,080 --> 00:53:51,880
Speaker 1: book on this one. But hey, if you want to

925
00:53:51,880 --> 00:53:53,919
Speaker 1: listen to other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind,

926
00:53:54,360 --> 00:53:55,879
Speaker 1: you know where to find us. Check out the Stuff

927
00:53:55,920 --> 00:53:59,120
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind podcast feed. You can find that.

928
00:53:59,200 --> 00:54:01,400
Speaker 1: Wherever you get your podcast, you get your core episodes

929
00:54:01,440 --> 00:54:03,440
Speaker 1: of Stift to Blow Your Mind on Tuesdays and Thursday's

930
00:54:03,520 --> 00:54:08,240
Speaker 1: Listener Man, on Monday's uh What's on Wednesday? Artifact Friday,

931
00:54:08,320 --> 00:54:10,480
Speaker 1: we do a little weird House Cinema, which is just

932
00:54:10,560 --> 00:54:14,799
Speaker 1: dark time to talk about weird movies with none or

933
00:54:14,920 --> 00:54:17,080
Speaker 1: less of the science. Sometimes we sneak a little science

934
00:54:17,120 --> 00:54:19,480
Speaker 1: in there, but anyway, that's the schedule. Wherever you listen

935
00:54:19,520 --> 00:54:21,880
Speaker 1: to us, though, if the platform gives you the ability

936
00:54:21,920 --> 00:54:25,600
Speaker 1: to rate and review and even subscribe, do those things.

937
00:54:25,680 --> 00:54:28,200
Speaker 1: Those help us out huge things. As always to our

938
00:54:28,239 --> 00:54:31,400
Speaker 1: excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like

939
00:54:31,440 --> 00:54:33,319
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us with feedback on this

940
00:54:33,360 --> 00:54:35,840
Speaker 1: episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future,

941
00:54:36,000 --> 00:54:38,480
Speaker 1: just to say hello, you can email us at contact.

942
00:54:38,600 --> 00:54:48,440
Speaker 1: That's Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to

943
00:54:48,440 --> 00:54:50,960
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For

944
00:54:51,040 --> 00:54:53,799
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945
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946
00:54:57,680 --> 00:55:12,480
Speaker 1: Blah bl they point four point four part fo