By sea and rain: Alaskan village inundated by mysterious orange goo

August 6, 2011 – ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Leona Baldwin’s husband saw it first, and she got on the marine radio to alert others in the remote Alaska village of Kivalina that a strange orange goo was sitting on top of the town’s harbor. The news attracted all the townspeople, anxious to get a gander of the phenomenon that covered much of the harbor and then began washing ashore Wednesday. The next day it rained, and residents found the orange matter floating on top of the rain buckets they use to collect drinking water. It was also found on one roof, leading them to believe whatever it was, it was airborne, too. By Friday, the orange substance in the lagoon had dissipated or washed out to sea, and what was left on ground had dried to a powdery substance. Samples of the orange matter were collected in canning jars and sent to a lab in Anchorage for analysis. Until results are known, Kivalina’s 374 residents will likely continue to wonder just what exactly happened in their village. “Certainly at this point it’s a mystery,” said Emanuel Hignutt, a chemist with the state Department of Environmental Conservation lab in Anchorage . Kivalina, an Inupiat Eskimo village, is located at the tip of an 8-mile barrier reef on Alaska’s northwest coast, and is located between the Chukchi Sea and Kivalina River to the north and the Wulik River to the south. Villagers have never seen anything like this before, and elders have never heard any stories passed down from earlier generations about an orange-colored substance coming into town. Portions of the samples will also be sent to the University of Alaska Fairbanks and to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration lab in South Carolina for testing. “There’s a number of experts in the areas who can identify if it’s an organic material, for example, and what species this is, or perhaps it’s not an organic material, and we’re going to determine that, as well,” Hignutt said. The Coast Guard already has ruled out that the orange material, which some people described as having a semi-solid feel to it, was man-made or a petroleum product. That leaves algae as the best guess, said village administrator Janet Mitchell. The concern is if it’s somehow harmful. What will it do to fish, which villagers will soon start catching to stock up for winter, or the caribou currently being hunted, or the berries? When the material bunched up in the lagoon, it created 10 foot-by-100 foot swaths of glimmering orange. –AP