Climate Change Is Going to Be Gross: The thick layer of mucilage that covered the Sea of Marmara fo
I have to wonder if Bidens plan for mitigating global warming is going anywhere. It will be a start--that I hope.
Climate Change Is Going to Be Gross
The thick layer of mucilage that covered the Sea of Marmara for weeks was an unsettling glimpse of climate change’s more oozy effects.
By Jenna Scatena December 18, 2021
My first sight of it came one morning in June, as I rode the ferry through the Bosporus strait: a toxic glint on the sea’s surface. I initially thought it was oil, spilled from one of the many large container ships that pass through Istanbul via the Bosporus. Yet as we neared the glint, a sallow sludge marbled the water around the boat. In some areas, it was as thick and buoyant as fiberglass insulation. Its surface, coated with foamy bubbles and viscous puddles, was littered with balloons, bread crusts, and Styrofoam food containers.
It’s called marine mucilage, but the world knows it better as “sea snot,” thanks to the tsunami of stories that went viral when it overtook the Sea of Marmara in May. The internet marveled at the mess and moved on, but here in Istanbul, the sea snot hijacked the summer. Its unearthly, unavoidable presence closed down beaches and dominated conversations. For some of us, it was more profoundly unsettling.
This isn’t what I imagined global warming would look like. I was braced for bigger wildfires and rising seas; I wasn’t ready for sea snot. If the story of the Sea of Marmara in the summer of 2021 is a preview of what’s to come, the effects of climate change will be not only terrifyingly destructive but also weird, uncomfortable, and unbearably gross...........................................................................
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Eventually, the phytoplankton began to run out of nutrients, causing the cells of some species to exude a sticky substance. As these cells died, they collided and stuck together, aggregating into globs that hovered in the warmest layer of the stratified water. With time and exposure, the globs turned into a submerged mat of mucus that trapped nearly everything around it—bacteria, fish larvae, dead cells, debris. Bacteria thrived on the dead phytoplankton, adding to the mat’s mass. “At that point, it takes on a life of its own,” Mustafa Yucel, a marine-science professor at Middle East Technical University’s Institute of Marine Science, told me. With increasing water temperatures, he said, we should prepare to see more extreme reactions in our seas—including invasive-species outbreaks and massive algal and seaweed blooms....................................
https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/xt6JUtw3j91wTkPYE-M83fUiFfk=/0x0:4999x2812/1536x864/media/img/2021/12/01/crop_AP21163701171718/original.jpg
A view of the sea with people swimming, on the Asian side of Istanbul. (Kemal Aslan / AP)
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