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A strange green organism has spread around the globe, clogging up the world's rivers It began with a few small strange patches of slime, clinging to the rocks of the Heber River in Canada. Within a year, the patches had become thick, blooming mats. Within a few years the mats had grown into a giant green snot. And within a few decades this snot had spread around the world, clogging up rivers as far away as South America, Europe and Australasia. This snot, which is still flourishing today, is caused by a microscopic alga, a diatom that goes by its...

Icky algae alarms New England fishermen By LISA RATHKE, Associated Press Writer Aug 26, 2007 STOCKBRIDGE, Vt. - It looks like a clump of soiled sheep's wool, a cottony green or white mass that's turning up on rocks and river bottoms, snarling waterways. Already a scourge in New Zealand and parts of the American South and West, the aquatic algae called "rock snot" is creeping into New England, where it is turning up in pristine rivers and alarming fishermen and wildlife biologists. "It scares me," said Lawton Weber, a fly fishing guide, who first spotted it on the Connecticut River...