The Origins of Slime
Scripps graduate student investigates cause of mucilage outbreaks in her native Adriatic waters
September 2008
By Jim Gogek
As a child growing up near the beach in Trieste, Italy, Francesca Malfatti knew all too well about mucilage, or mucillagine in Italian, a sticky whitish green slime that rises to the sea surface in translucent clouds and washes ashore on northern Adriatic Sea beaches.
Malfatti remembers that kids jumping off rocks into the water would emerge coated in the naturally forming mucus, which, though not harmful, is by all accounts quite disgusting. The biggest threat of mucilage may be to the region's tourist industry, as northern Adriatic beaches are very popular among European vacationers.
Severe mucilage events in 1989, 1997, and 2000 convinced some officials that pollution was the cause. But scientists have been uncertain what's behind the phenomenon that occurs mainly in the northern Adriatic. Now, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego researcher who grew up swimming in the slime-tainted waters thinks she has developed a better understanding… or at least the beginning of the answer.
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