In the early days of spring 2021, an unexpected occurence of sea mucus was observed in the Marmara Sea in Western Turkey manifesting as a foamy membrane floating on the sea surface. To respond to this emergency, SAVI mapped the full extent of this environmental disaster. Using multi-band satellite imagery and automated classification techniques, SAVI released web maps that were updated every three days to monitor the situation. Twitter posts including photographs and videos of this phenomenon were coupled with large scale remote sensing observations to provide a local understanding of the day-to-day situation. The complex nature of the waterflow in the Marmara Sea creates difficult conditions for training machine learning algorithms, so an ongoing update procedure was adopted to ensure the correctness of the observations. Produced web maps were published by the Metropolitan Municipaltiy of Istanbul. Sea mucus has disappeared due to rising temperatures but is expected to be observed again in coming years.

Collaborators: Bilge Kobas