Sea of Marmara

Turkey's Marmara region recorded its highest rainfall for July since 2005, receiving 48.7 kilograms of rain per square meter on average during the month.

Huge thunderclouds caused an electric storm in Turkey's Marmara region, particularly hitting Istanbul with thousands of lightning bolts in the early hours of July 24.

The announcement of the route of a planned canal in Istanbul, linking the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara west of the Bosphorus, has triggered major action in the real estate market, but many locals are worried about the potentially damaging environmental impact of the “crazy project.”

Turkey on Jan. 15 unveiled the “most appropriate” route for the controversial planned Canal Istanbul project, an artificial sea-level waterway parallel to the Bosphorus that will connect the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara.

The district of Gemlik in the western province of Bursa on the coast of the Sea of Marmara will be relocated to a higher elevation, since it is currently located on a fault line that sits on an alluvial foundation, the government announced as part of a newly issued state of emergency decree released on Dec. 24.

Local authorities in a northwestern Turkish district have warned citizens not to take away or consume dead fish washed ashore in the Susurluk River.

Istanbul fishermen who set sail in the Marmara Sea after the end of the five-month seasonal fishing ban on Sept. 1, have come across schools of mackerel, a fish that used to be plentiful but has rarely been seen in recent years. 

Fener GreekOrthodox Patriarch Bartholomew conducted a religious ceremony in the northwestern Turkish resort town of Erdek on Aug. 23, with the participation of locals and some 250 visitors from the Greek island of Chios. 

An earthquake with a magnitude stronger than 7 will hit Turkey's Marmara region in the near future, Boğaziçi University's Kandilli Observatory head Haluk Özener stated on Aug. 17, Hurriyet Daily News reported. 

An earthquake museum, set to finish in September in the northwestern province of Kocaeli, will provide education for new generations to grow with the reality of earthquakes and to provide academic research with documents of the Aug. 17, 1999 Marmara earthquake.