Slime in the Sea of Marmara could appear due to warmer than usual winters

The two previous abnormally warm winters in the Marmara Sea area could have caused the appearance of sea slime, which in the spring and summer of 2021 attracted the attention of the whole world. Scientists of the Marine Hydrophysical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Sevastopol) came to such conclusions after analyzing climatic changes in the region over the past few years, head of the Department of Remote Research Methods Sergey Stanichny told TASS.

"With the help of special algorithms, we can observe the processes taking place on the Earth's surface from satellite images. Naturally, we could not ignore such a phenomenon, although it had not previously come into view. Analysis of the images showed that in previous years, during the winter and spring periods, the substance was formed, but the phenomenon did not reach such a scale. I think that the possible reason for the abnormally large volume of mucus this year is the two previous warm winters," Stanichny said.

He explained that the staff of the Moscow State Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences began studying the situation in May of this year, even before scientists from different countries paid attention to sea slime. "Having processed a large amount of data, we have so far identified only one feature that could be a possible reason for the scale of the phenomenon," the source added.

"When the winters were cold enough, the streams circulated in such a way that the water that passed by Istanbul quickly mixed with the rest of the volume of the Marmara Sea. But the last two winters - this is the only feature that we were able to track at the moment - were 2 degrees warmer than the average norm, which probably disrupted the processes of vertical exchange," Stanichny said.

Thus, the concentrations of substances in different layers of water changed and sea slime appeared in larger volumes than usual. This year, despite the serious volumes, it dissipated in two months - the researchers cannot yet name the reasons for the disappearance.

As Stanichny explained, scientists still do not fully understand the nature of the phenomenon under study. Presumably, this substance appears during the vital activity of phytoplankton - perhaps as a reaction to atypical situations.

The main danger of slime is that it envelops marine life, effectively blocking the ability to breathe, and also heats up itself and leads to the heating of the sea under it, changing the living conditions in the water column - this is clearly visible on satellite images. In addition, it cleans the surface of the sea, pulling together small particles and litter like a magnet, but then, perhaps, it falls to the bottom with them - also changing the mode of the ecosystem.

"The only thing that can be said for sure now is that a certain factor has appeared, a new challenge in ecosystems. It is unknown what this will lead to next: maybe there will be new difficulties, or maybe it is a new mechanism of self-purification of nature. And scientists have received a new object on the sea surface and in the water column, for us this entails the need to adjust the data recognition algorithms on satellite images. These adjustments were made in the very first days, but taking them into account, we had to revise the images and recheck the conclusions on the Marmara Sea over the past few years," the scientist added.