Watch out for the blob!

Our oceans are taking hits left and right, between the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, overfishing, ocean pollution, and red algae tides. Now there are huge, smelly, mucus-like blobs floating around the Mediterranean Sea.

Besides their eeew factor, the blobs, which are called mucilages, can contain viruses and bacteria, including the potentially dangerous E coli. They also can harm fish and suffocate sea life when they settle to the ocean floor.

These blobs are nothing new. They were first observed more than 200 years ago. Mucilages are made up of large amounts of marine snow, tiny bits of living and dead organic matter.

The gelatinous masses usually congeal along the Mediterranean coasts in the summer. But the authors of a recently published study which looked into mucilages, found that outbreaks have risen nearly exponentially over the last two decades. And they are forming in the winter as well.

Their scope may also be growing since they have been reported from the Aegean, Northern, and Tyrrhenian Seas.

Researchers from  the Polytechnic University of Marche in Ancona, Italy, suspect a connection between the proliferation of these goopy blobs and climate-driven sea surface warming.

Is there anything that we can do to stop them? It may not appear so, but any action you take to reduce your own global warming impact or to support legislation to curb climate change may indirectly help. If we all do what we can, it’ll add up.

Click here to learn more about your Carbon Footprint.

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