On the banks of the river in Barkhamsted, you can see it: rock snot.
Wade into a river this fishing season and if you're in the right spot, you might encounter something gooey and a little gross.
It's called rock snot -- a microscopic form of algae. Now, a new species of rock snot has been discovered, and so far, the only known place in America where you can find it is in an out-of-the way part of the Farmington River.
Wind your way up a trail, walk through a cemetery, push aside some brush and there, on the banks of the Farmington River in Barkhamsted, you can see it: rock snot.
Diba Khan-Bureau, a professor at Three Rivers Community College, has a name for it: Didymospheniahullii, a species entirely new to science, which she helped discover along with Mike Beauchene, a biologist from the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.
Beauchene described it as "wet goopey snot that you would wipe off of your infants or your toddler's noses." As we talked, Beauchene -- who's wearing waders and standing in the cold, flowing Farmington river --- hauled a rock covered in a fresh snot sample out of water.
"You can kind of see on the surface of the rock here -- they look like about quarter-sized mushrooms," Beauchene said. "[That's] a whole group of single-cell diatoms that produce this big long stalk ...and that gets them up elevated off the rock a little bit."
While unlikely to happen in Connecticut, runaway blooms of rock snot can create problems.
Beauchene said rock snot, which is nicknamed "didymo," forms into clumps because of those stalks, which pull on each other, create friction, and give didymo its characteristic "cottony" feel.
Especially since it was first detected in the state in 2011, anglers have been on the lookout for didymo.
"One of our diagnostics -- when we talk to the public -- is if they pull out an algae from the river bottom, that they think is didymo and its green color, for one, or if it's really slimy, they want to think it's snot. But it's something else," Beauchene said.
Under a microscope, Khan-Bureau said this new species looks different than other known species of rock snot. It's so different, in fact, she was inspired to do DNA analysis, take lots of photographs with a scanning electron microscope, and send samples to scientists all around the world.
Eventually, everyone agreed -- this species of didymo from Barkhamsted was new to science. Khan-Bureau and Beauchenepublished their findings in the European Journal of Phycology.
As we talked, Beauchene waded back into the river, scanning the bed with polarized sunglasses for more samples. Khan-Bureau held up a long, stringy didymo bloom that was dripping with cold water.
Where did she get the name Didymospheniahullii?
"My dad had a kidney transplant, and the doctor that saved his life, after the kidney transplant failed, was Doctor David Hull," said Khan-Bureau. She said Hall was a surgeon at Hartford Hospital, always curious about many aspects of science.
"In fact, hull means river channel in Latin," she said. "And so how fitting, right?"
While unlikely to happen in Connecticut, runaway blooms of rock snot can create problems.
Large mats of stalk material can blanket river bottoms, choke out life there, and alter river ecology. For that reason, Mike Beauchene from the DEEP said the state is trying to contain the spread of this new organism.
So as fishing season kicks off on April 9, Beauchene urged anglers heading out to the west branch of the Farmington River to be on the look out for rock snot.
And if you're fishing in Barkhamsted, he said, do your part to contain the algae's spread by treating it like snot, and washing your boots and your equipment after fishing.
