A mysterious glob of unknown material up to 12 miles long has appeared off Alaska's northern coast. Coast Guard Petty Officer 1st Class Terry Hasenauer says, 'It's certainly biological. It's definitely not an oil product of any kind.' Photo courtesy North Slope Borough IT’S NOT OIL: No one in the area can recall seeing anything like it before.

By Don Hunter Something big and strange is floating through the Chukchi Sea between Wainwright and Barrow. Hunters from Wainwright first started noticing the stuff sometime probably early last week. It’s thick and dark and "gooey" and is drifting for miles in the cold Arctic waters, according to Gordon Brower with the North Slope Borough’s Planning and Community Services Department. Brower and other borough officials, joined by the U.S. Coast Guard, flew out to Wainwright to investigate. The agencies found "globs" of the stuff floating miles offshore Friday and collected samples for testing. … Something else: No one in Barrow or Wainwright can remember seeing anything like this before, Brower said. … The stuff is "gooey" and looks dark against the bright white ice floating in the Arctic Ocean, Brower said. "It’s pitch black when it hits ice and it kind of discolors the ice and hangs off of it," Brower said. He saw some jellyfish tangled up in the stuff, and someone turned in what was left of a dead goose — just bones and feathers — to the borough’s wildlife department. "It kind of has an odor; I can’t describe it," he said. … The two Coast Guard experts sent up to overfly the area with the borough said they saw nothing that resembled an oil slick, Hasenauer said. "We brought back one sample of what they believe to be an algae," he said, and a big algae bloom is one possibility. …

Huge blob of Arctic goo floats past Slope communities

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