The Sea of Marmara is a unique system that seems to have conditions favorable for marine mucilage. The low salinity warm layer on the top with high nutrient content on top of a colder more saline layer causes a phytoplankton bloom that can become very dense. This dense algae cannot sink easily due to the stratification and ends up decomposing due to bacterial action and the bubbles of gas then make it float back up to get a layer of mucilage. This material then eventually sinks and covers the benthic areas that kill organisms that live there.

Additional aspects of these causes:

• Nutrients – N, P: the mucus along the Turkey’s coastline comes from microscopic marine algae called phytoplankton that grow at a rapid rate when they have access to excess nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus. These nutrients could come from fertilizer in agricultural runoff, or from untreated sewage that has leaked into the Sea of Marmara.
• Light-limited: Some algal growth is limited by light that can penetrate the surface and at some stages, this can limit growth and can also be affected by turbidity, watershed management, pollution and other aspects.
• Climate/Climate Change- warm waters provide an ideal breeding ground for phytoplankton growth. The correlation between warm waters and phytoplankton growth is evident from several studies including a study conducted in the Mediterranean Sea, suggests the spreading of mucilage linked to climate-driven sea surface warming.
• Researchers think that the factors mentioned above are the cause; nevertheless, little is known about the interplay between chemistry, biology, and physics, resulting in these severe occurrences.
• In the 1970s, to prevent a cholera epidemic , wastewater from city around Marmara was pumped out to sea, but only half treated. Although that was considered acceptable at that time, it is no longer considered acceptable due to regional growth.