Mucus monsters of the deep

They’re huge. They’re gross. They’re giant mucus-like blobs, and they’re coming for us.

Called mucilages, they are made up of dead and living organic matter that has aggregated into a slimy, whitish blob. Found most often in the Mediterranean, they can reach more than 100 miles in length. And they look like Poseidon’s snot.

Or maybe this is what the ancients were referring to in the myth of Aphrodite’s birth. Supposedly Uranus was castrated and his genitals fell into the sea, creating aphros, or sea foam. From this fecund foam arose the goddess of love.  

After taking a quick look at some pictures of these gooey blobs, I can tell you: It’s not much of a stretch to guess they came from Uranus’s junk.

Saying the blobs are “gross” is an understatement. They’re putrid. They’re sticky. They’re slimy. They’re disgusting.

Serena Fonda Umani is one of the Italian scientists who authored a recent study about the mucilages. She recalled the experience of diving through marine snow – the less dense forerunner of mucilage. Umani said it was like swimming through a sugar solution, except afterwards the “sugar” got stuck in her hair and wet suit.

“The suit was impossible to wash totally, because it was covered by a layer of greenish slime,” she said.  

Thankfully, no normal person would try swimming through one of these things. They are certainly not “the kind of seascape one goes to the beach (for),” as marine biologist Farooq Azam put it.  

You might think that maybe mucilages are like their brothers who live in our nostrils: icky, yet harmless. Sure, watching a kid go hunting in his nose, bag a booger and then make a snack out of his prey can make you want to vomit. But it won’t hurt the kid, right?

Not so with mucilages. They can kill fish by suffocating them. The biggest ones can even sink to the bottom and form a blanket over the ocean floor.  

The sea boogers are literally threatening the Earth’s oceans.

Worse, though, are the viruses and bacteria that thrive in the mucilages. E. coli, among others, is harbored by the blobs, and the release of such pathogens so close to beaches may become a future public health risk.

The most concerning thing about the blobs, however, is that they might be getting worse. A recent study by three Italian scientists found that mucilage outbreaks are correlated with above-average sea temperatures.  

And that means – you guessed it – climate change could be the culprit for the almost exponential increase in mucilage formation in the past 20 years. Think of it as the Earth being stuffed up by a sinus infection, and its 103-degree fever isn’t helping.

Mucilage outbreaks are an example of the consequences of global warming we weren’t aware of until recently. Though silly-sounding, sea boogers might be a symptom of a much more serious diagnosis.

How long will it be before we begin to treat this disease?