Marine mammals strandings on the Aegean coast of Turkey and governance model for their evaluation

This thesis was carried out to determine the frequency of the stranded marine mammals on the Turkish Aegean Coast, to determine their temporal and spatial distribution, as well as the factors threatening these taxa and to improve an effective governance model for the stranded marine mammals. Accordingly, the cases, occurred between 1 January 1990 and 27 June 2019 on Turkish Aegean Sea Coasts from the Greek border in the north to the Dalaman River in the south; the TV and newspaper news, the websites of related associations and foundations, the related thesis and published articles were collected. At the same time, seasonal coastal surveys were carried out in designated areas on the Central Aegean coast between 18 May 2018 and 9 March 2019. A total of 137 stranding cases of marine mammals were recorded between 1 January 1990 and 27 June 2019. 118 of cases belong to Cetaceans and 19 of cases belong to Monachus monachus. Among the collected data, the species with the highest stranding record was identified as Stenella coeruleoalba with 41 individuals. 16 of the recorded cases are live stranding. Seasonally, 31.1% of the cases occurred in Spring and 31.9% occurred in Winter. It is known that only 23.5% of the stranded individuals have been carried out necropsy and accordingly it was found out that the exact known cause of death of individuals is determined as 20.3%. It was determined that the stranding cases have increased year by year. In these years, a maximum of 17 cases occurred in one year, in 2018. With the result of this study a stranded marine mammal database for 29 years has been created to be used in subsequent studies for Turkey's Aegean Sea coast. A mobile application was developed for iOS and Android operating systems which are thought to be the basis for the stranding network in the Turkish Aegean Sea Coast. No dead individual has been encountered in the seasonal coastal surveys.