(Image source: Discovery News)

BY TRACY PFEIFFER

ANCHOR BLAKE HANSON

You're watching multisource health video news analysis from Newsy. 

It’s a mystery researchers say they’ve solved--again.

After initially suggesting a mysterious orange goo that washed up on Alaskan shores was microscopic eggs--researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Association now believe it is a fungus called “rust.” (Images: Discovery News)

Alaska Native News provides the backstory.

“On August third, villagers woke to find a film of the substance floating on the waters of their harbor. After a rainfall, the substance was also found in their buckets kept out for collecting rain-water. It soon dissipated, but not before a sample could be taken to a lab in Anchorage for further study.”

A sample was later sent to researchers with more advanced equipment in Charleston, South Carolina.

Where -- as Discovery News reports -- the egg story seemed fishy. A taxomonist with the lab says...

"The EDS [Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy] told us that the cell wall was organic and not made of minerals. Many small protozoans have cell wall composed of different minerals. This was one [piece] of evidence we used to narrow the possibilities."

A writer for the Alaska Dispatch describes the fungus -- and why researchers probably came to their original conclusion.

“The substance in question is a fungal spore of the type that usually causes plant rust, a disease that causes a rust-like appearance on leaves and stems. ...Eggs and spores look a lot alike under a microscope.”

So with the egg theory tossed out -- is there reason to worry about the fungus among us? The Telegraph has a statement on that issue from a NOAA spokesperson.

"Rust is a disease that only affects plants, so there's no cause for alarm... There just has not been a lot of research done on rust fungi in the Arctic. This is one that we've never encountered before that we know of.”

Researchers still aren’t sure where the orange substance came from.