Experts call for quick action against sea snot in Marmara Sea

ISTANBUL

With concerns over the uncontrolled production of sea snot invading the Marmara Sea since it was first spotted in October 2020, experts have urged authorities to take quick action to eliminate the problem as soon as possible.

Blaming wrong waste management policies, experts highlighted that the sea snot incident is not “a natural, but a man-made disaster.”

“The Marmara Sea have become a dead sea. We have to heal it as soon as possible,” Erol Kesici, a scientific adviser at Turkish Association for the Conservation of Nature (TTKD), told Demirören News Agency on June 2.

The oxygen level in the Marmara Sea is too low, said Mustafa Yücel, a scientist working on a research vessel of Middle East Technical University (ODTÜ) floating over the Marmara Sea.

“We are witnessing a disaster that we have not seen before. If we take precautions now, we can take the sea out of this state of coma in five to six years,” Yücel stressed.

Mustafa Sarı, the dean of the Marine Faculty of Bandırma Onyedi Eylül University, demanded a new waste management policy for the Marmara Sea.

Noting that around 25 million people live near the borders of the Marmara Sea, Sarı said: “The mucilage did not occur accidentally. We made it happen with wrongful waste management.”

In previous years, though there was the presence of sea snot on the Marmara Sea, it was not at this level. According to Sarı, the sea lost its capacity to handle mucilage anymore.

“We cannot find a solution in 40 days to a problem we created in 40 years,” he added.

Authorities started a cleaning process on the Marmara Sea recently, but according to Neslihan Özdelice, a professor from Istanbul University, this is just a temporary action.

“The sea bed is dead, and we have to find a way to revive the oxygen-deprived sea immediately,” Özdelice noted.