Drought brings forth slimy blobs in Iowa river

CEDAR RAPIDS (AP) ?Slimy blobs have shown up in the Wapsipinicon River in northeastern Iowa and other spots in the upper Midwest and Canada thanks to the region?s warm and dry summer.

Experts said the blobs ? colonies of bryozoan ? are manifestations of the drought. They like warm water with little current, The Gazette reported today.

?With the drought, we might have just the right combination for them to flourish this year,? said Dan Kirby, a Department of Natural Resources fisheries biologist in Manchester.

Bryozoa expert Tim Wood, a biology professor at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, said bryozoa populations vary greatly each year, depending on the conditions. This summer, the creatures are doing well throughout the upper Midwest and Canada due to the dry, hot summer that has led to warmer and slower streams.

Wood, secretary of the International Bryozoology Association, said the bryozoa colonies are thousands of tiny Pectinatella magnifica that band together for a structure that offers them protection and reduces their competition for space. The colonies create their own water current for drawing in water that the individual animals filter for nutrients.

Wood said the blobs pose no danger, other than clogging water intake systems. But, Wood noted, ?They scare people.?

Wood said he?d read about a Florida retirement community where residents found the creatures in a private lake and asked police to shoot them.

Iowa Department of Natural Resources staffers said Iowans also are puzzled by the bryozoa colonies but need not worry.

?They are just one of the interesting ?other? life-forms that call our rivers home,? DNR fisheries biologist Scott Gritters said.