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