Mysterious purple sludge that’s plaguing Northern Norway’s beautiful coast. Photo: Roger B. Larsen
Northern Norway is home to some of the most beautiful fjords on the planet. These long, narrow inlets with steep snow-covered cliffs, created by glacial erosion, draw hundreds of thousands of tourists to this wonderful region each year. However, over the past several months, these fjords have been plagued by millions of cubic meters of a mysterious purple sludge. Since late August, the mucus-like slime remained a total mystery. Until now.
Over the past month, scientists have descended on the slime in hopes to uncover this bizarre mystery mucus. The current consensus is jellyfish—lots and lots of jellyfish. The Local News reported that Tone Falkenhaug and Jan Helge Fosså, from Norway’s Institute of Marine Research (IMR), believe the slime is the product of a gigantic bloom of cigar comb jellies that then partially disintegrated.
“It’s probably dead or partially dead jellyfish, and we think it’s the kind of jellyfish, called Ctenophora beroe,” Falkenhaug told Local News. “We can’t explain why it is like this, but it’s not uncommon that jellyfish appear in very dense aggregations like this, especially deep in the fjord.”
Photo: Roger B. Larsen
Roger B. Larsen, associate professor from the Arctic University of Norway, also visited the area and took samples of the sludge. “I have some samples of the red-pink slime, and it will hopefully be analyzed at the end of the month,” Larsen told Earth Touch News. “I’ve done annual cruises with my students here in the past, and have never seen anything like this,” he added. “It is obvious that there is something going on which wildlife is unable to cope with.”
