Mucilage not descended to Marmara Sea depths: Report

ANKARA

Studies have shown that mucilage in the Sea of Marmara has not yet descended to the lower depths of the sea in northwestern Turkey, a marine sciences institute in the country said.

METU Marine Sciences Institute said that levels of hydrogen sulfide, a product of bacterial degradation, were below the minimum needed to accurately measure the substance and that the smell of rotten eggs which it causes were not present in the samples collected.

Mustafa Yücel, deputy director of the institute, told Anadolu Agency that they had conducted detailed measurements of hydrogen sulfide and oxygen with multiple methods in the Çınarcık basin on the Marmara Sea’s eastern coast.

“It was among our first results that mucilage accumulates in the first 30-meter layer of the sea and has not yet descended into the lower waters,” Yücel said.

He said the team had also confirmed that still, very little oxygen penetrates the sea’s deepest regions, around 1,200 meters.

“We’ve seen that there’s no structure that can continuously accumulate hydrogen sulfide at the bottom of the Marmara,” he noted.

Yücel emphasized that with the reduction in terrestrial nutrient loads with the Marmara Action Plan against the increase in mucilage they anticipated that a significant part of the depths will begin to re-oxygenate with new water coming from the Mediterranean Sea.