Don't panic -- it's organic!

... or so I hope.

Okay, here's what we know about the gas smell today.

1) It came from the west -- either in the ocean or above the ocean. With a strong onshore breeze, it was noticed right at the coast, all along the coast.

2) It hit a huge area with significant concentration for a fairly brief time, suggesting it was more of a single event than a long release.

For these reasons, I discount the official explanation put forward during a similar stink two years ago that it's decaying vegetation around the lagoons.

I also discount the military fuel dump explanation. If the military were to dump fuel far out at sea, it's hard to imagine it staying so concentrated over such a great distance and then dispersing so quickly. The amount of fuel that would have to be dumped a few miles offshore to produce such an intense and widespread effect would be staggering.

And it's hard to imagine any other polluter dumping that much of anything out in the ocean that wouldn't be instantly detectable by coastal authorities.

That would seem to leave only natural causes from the ocean. One possibility is a release of gases from beneath the sea floor.

But I am most intrigued by the possibility that the smell was a release of organic gas from the ocean itself. Years ago, I heard about semiannual turnover of the ocean surface water near the shore. That may have been an old surfers' legend, but there are many temperature-related effects that bring layers of warm or cold water (thermoclines) up or down -- read more on those here. Today's event and last year's both occurred in the heat of the middle of summer. I suspect something caused a turnover of thermal layers offshore, and brought some organic matter from below to the surface, where it interacted with the air and the hot sun and -- stank.

Anyway, that's a better theory than someone testing airborne chemical or biological weapons on us.

UPDATE Wednesday morning: A tipster tells us there's a green tide today... which would support the theory that this was a thermal turnover event suddenly bringing organic matter up from below... or an eruption of undersea gas could have stirred up microorganisms... or caused microorganisms to blossom.