There are few pleasures so wide-eyed in life as the look of warm moxie between your bare toes as you bet out at the sea . The idyllic tantrum however might be defile passably if you were to yield home to find the colloidal suspension of your foot inexplicably stained pitch-dark . That ’s what ’s been happen to the great unwashed chitchat the shoring of Maine and New England sans - footgear recently , but the culprit is thought to have finally been pinpoint .
One stirred stroller was Jenny Greenleaf who verbalize with theNew York Timesabout their puzzling experience . Greenleaf had visited the beach for a barefoot stroll only to return home and find oneself their metrical foot stained by a substance that did n’t come out to have an fossil oil - like texture , a historicallycommon contaminantof beach . concord to a video recording news report from News Center Maine ( below ) , the substance was found not to be crude - based , which got people intelligibly worry about what else it might be .
According toAP , marine geologist with the Maine Geological Survey Steve Dickson decided to abuse up to the challenge . Working with two local adjourn oceanographers , they took samples to enquire further with the help of a microscope and oddly detect the black material to be millions of miniature insect . “ This is the first time I ’ve check or heard of this in my 35 age , ” said Dickinson to AP .
The incident was reported on byJim Britt , a spokesman for Maine ’s Department of Agriculture , Conservation and Forestry , who explained that the creature appear to be kelp fly . These teeny bug feed on decaying seaweed so are a plebeian indweller of beaches . For some reason , it appears they have perish in their zillion along sure stretches of beach where they are staining the foot of passersby . They make a course occurring pigment in a similar style tocochinealred that ’s derived from crushed - up beetles .
It ’s go for that nail the exact mintage of kelp fly might bring more answers , but for now Britt has expressed that beyond being a bit smudgy the bugs pose no obvious threat to human health .
While potentially less ecologically annihilating than an oil color spill , there are some for whom perhaps a bit of petroleum might have been a tad less foul . “ … It ’s actually horrifying ; the stains are likely from the unexplained and unprecedented MASS DEATH of MILLIONS of flyspeck kelp fly off the seashore of Maine , got ta lie with it … ” wrote aTwitteruser .
