In today’s adventure we are traveling to the Mediterranean, a land with some of the oldest tales of terrifying sea monsters on the planet. Now we are told a new menace has arisen and warned in dire tones that it will soon be gunning for us. Join me as I take a look at ‘Marine Mucilage’ and explain why I don’t care.

So what happens in the warm still waters of the Mediterranean and Adriatic seas is organic matter (both living and not) falls from the surface and congregates near the floor. While this is happening, bacteria are doing their own thing and spitting out exopolymers (basically glue) to whatever piece of sea garbage they are attached to. Eventually, large chains are formed. Large chains that just happen to make a good spot for others critters to come hide out or look for food. Of course that just makes it a better place to hide or eat and we have ourselves a chain reaction.

Now that we have our blob of sea-garbage we can start looking at why people are flipping their lids. I have to admit after you have to start describing the length in miles of one of these things with 4 digits you begin to take notice. This thick mucus structure can also trap fish and cover their gills  until they suffocate and eventually dissolve into part of the blob themselves. What has scientists and the guys at national geographic up in arms though, is the ability for the mucilage to carry bacteria and viruses, the most notable of which being E(scherichia) Coli.

Which brings me to why I don’t care, or more specifically, why this thing fails at being a human killing terror machine. The first is that these things have been reported since the 1700′s and if there was a high rate of infection someone would have noticed earlier that hey, all these guys that have e coli went to the beach and swam in bio-garbage yesterday. Secondly, when will this conversation ever be necessary? “I know the beach is covered with this weird sick mucus, but I am going to swim anyway”    “Don’t do that, there is incredible microbial biodiversity in those, maybe even E Coli”    “oh, well I better not then”.

a link: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/10/091008-giant-sea-mucus-blobs.html

-Wolverox