CLEVELAND, Ohio - A ship that docked in Cleveland last summer harbored what scientists believe was a previously unknown form of life.
The revelation occurred after the research vessel Blue Heron, which was monitoring harmful algal blooms in Lake Erie, began having mechanical issues.
The captain, Rual Lee, piloted the boat to Cleveland where it could be examined in a dry dock at Great Lakes Shipyard on the Old River Channel of the Cuyahoga River.
After the Blue Heron was lifted out of the water and lowered onto a parking lot, the problem was diagnosed. The propellor shaft bearings needed replacing.
But as one mystery was resolved, another more enigmatic one emerged.
Lee noticed a tar-like substance oozing from the rudder post, a normally hidden component of the ship’s steering apparatus that was exposed during maintenance.
He had never seen anything like it during previous dry dock inspections of the ship, a former fishing boat acquired by the University of Minnesota Duluth to conduct research.
Curious, Lee took a glop of the goo and plopped it in water to see if it left a sheen. It didn’t. Then he turned a blowtorch on the slimy substance to see if it would burn. It didn’t do that either.
Baffled, he had experts at the University of Minnesota Duluth investigate.
“Hey, we work for a science lab,” he said. “We have people who do things.”
That’s when Doug Ricketts, marine superintendent for the Blue Heron, came into the picture. During one of his trips to Cleveland to check on the progress of repairs, he put a half cup of the goo into a sample bag and carted it back to Duluth.
Once there, he handed it over to Cody Sheik, an associate professor at the university and an expert in microbial ecology.
Sheik’s interest was immediately piqued. The goo looked like something his former graduate school associates at University of Oklahoma plucked from oil reservoirs to examine for organisms. As for the substance found on the Blue Heron, he thought, “maybe there might be something in there hanging out.”
To learn more, Sheik used chemicals to crack open the cells of the goo and expose their microscopic inner workings. In doing so, he discovered about 20 DNA sequences, or genomes, and ran them through a worldwide computer database.
Most of the sequences matched known genomes found elsewhere in the world, he said, but a few were less identifiable, including one that was completely novel. It’s now known, at least temporarily, as ShipGoo001.
ShipGoo001 is believed to be a single cell organism, but its appearance is not yet evident. It could be thread-like, spherical or even twisty, Sheik said.
In a broader context, the discovery of the goo demonstrates how life can exist in unique places, including the built environments of a building or ship, and that “we probably should be a little more open to sampling random stuff at times,” he said.
Trying to decipher the previously unknown life form speaks to the playful side of his job, Sheik said, and the chance “to show people that science can be fun and it’s not real stuffy.”
Sheik initially thought the goo was old grease, until learning that the rudder post, where it was oozing from, is only lubricated with water from the lake.
It’s possible ShipGoo001 is carbon-based and derived from stuff floating in the water, he said.
Bottom line: he doesn’t know exactly what he’s dealing with. But it appears he has come across a new order of organism, and that it deserves more study.
Lee is perplexed as well, but he’s comforted by early conclusions that the goo does not pose a threat to the environment or to his ship. It’s not some boat-feasting substance like whatever had been eating away at steel pilings in Duluth Harbor a number of years ago, he said.
“We’re all kind of curious about what this is,” he said. “Maybe we’ll be able to get a hard answer one of these days.”
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