WTF is Going On In Alaska: HUGE BLOB OF ARCTIC GOO?

The mystery has apparently been solved before this post went live:
The goo is "marine alge." (or that's what "they" want you to believe)

Original Post:

Holy Shit! Some blob of goo is floating around the waters of alaska and it has nothing to do with Sarah Palin, apparently. Says the Anchorage Daily News: "Huge blob of Arctic goo floats past Slope communities. IT'S NOT OIL: No one in the area can recall seeing anything like it before."

Further,

"Nobody knows for sure what the gunk is, but Petty Officer 1st Class Terry Hasenauer says the Coast Guard is sure what it is not.

"It's certainly biological," Hasenauer said. "It's definitely not an oil product of any kind. It has no characteristics of an oil, or a hazardous substance, for that matter.

"It's definitely, by the smell and the makeup of it, it's some sort of naturally occurring organic or otherwise marine organism." (adn)

So there is some sort of naturally occurring organic (or otherwise!) marine organism that nobody has seen before that is "thick and dark and gooey" that streches for MILES off the coast of alaska and nobody is concerned? Now I have three reasons not to go to Alaska.


[UPDATE 7-24-2009 9:44A]

EIGN contacted a local marine life expert (our very first actual, first person, foray in reporting), who spoke anonymously for fear of appearing as an official source on a "stupid blog," said "it was an algal bloom, but [it's] very rare for those to occur that far north."