Expedition 3: Fish
September 10 and November 18, 2025
Salacak and Üsküdar Shore

In memory of our dear friend Müge Yorgancı Ozar, our compass on the Fish Expedition.

Navigators: Güngör Yorgancı, Müge Yorgancı Ozar, Kuşkonmaz Fishing Community
Crew: Aslıhan Demirtaş, Merve Yücel, Eylül Şenses, Metean Bars
Annotators: Müge Yorgancı Ozar, Aslıhan Demirtaş

September 10, 2025

The season is autumn, and the northeasterly wind prevails. The average temperature is around 23°C during the day and 16°C at night. Along Istanbul’s shores of the Sea of Marmara, the water temperature is approximately 23.5°C, still carrying the mild warmth of late summer.

We are on the Salacak shore, near Şemsi Paşa Mosque. As Istanbul-born Evliya Çelebi wrote: “Şemsi Paşa Mosque is a small mosque by the sea, yet it is so exquisitely charming that it seems almost like an elegant pavilion. It is a work of Mimar Sinan.”1

Surveying engineer Güngör Yorgancı, from the Kuşkonmaz fishing community, and urban planner Müge Yorgancı Ozar host us in their neighborhood. Known locally as Kuşkonmaz Mosque, the Şemsi Ahmet Paşa Complex is fully attuned to its location: a coastal mosque that brings people and animals into relation with the sea and its inhabitants—at least until an additional pedestrian walkway was patched in front of it.2 The way the mosque gently meets the sea reveals how Istanbul’s contemporary shorelines are often designed as though they belonged somewhere else. In a sense, the whole country seems unaware of where it stands. After all, leb-i derya—meaning “at the very lip of the sea”—has become little more than a real estate cliché. Should the “Sea Snotting Expeditions” perhaps be followed by a design project titled “The Salty Waterfronts of Istanbul”? Wouldn’t it be worthwhile to reimagine the city’s shores in a way that truly deserves to be called leb-i derya?

Coastal fishing—small-scale and not driven by large profits—is an ancient urban practice in Istanbul, documented since antiquity. It embodies a distinctive way of relating to the city.3 The relationships forged with the land and the sea run so deep that what Aristotle, then Strabo, and later Pliny the Elder observed about the movements of fish around Salacak accords with the experience of Güngör Bey, who has fished the Bosphorus for as long as he has lived in Istanbul. In his telling, fish—startled by the rock on which the Maiden’s Tower stands—turn toward Sarayburnu, while Pliny writes: “[...] in the Thracian Strait [Istanbul/Bosporus Strait], which connects the Marmara Sea to the Black Sea, at the narrowest part of the Bosporus that separates Europe and Asia, near Kalchedon [Kadıköy] on the Asian side is a rock. Fish are always startled when they suddenly see this rock in front of them. In droves, they head straight to Cape Byzantion [Golden Horn] on the opposite side. This is the reason why this place is called the ‘Golden Horn.’”4 Indeed, the Bosphorus’s topography, the pattern of its currents, and the behavior of its fish have remained constant.

Müge notes that every coastal village along the Bosphorus has a particular way of fishing. “You have to learn by watching,” Güngör Bey adds. “We call the more skilled ones çelebi.” Likewise, social anthropologist Tim Ingold describes learning as a process of “enskilment,” inseparable from doing and from one’s relationship with place. A çelebi fisherman’s skill, then, is not “a property of the body but of the whole system of relations constituted by the presence of the practitioner in his or her environment.”5 A çelebi is not someone who simply learns rules and applies them, but someone who has learned to attend to the world and attune themselves to it.

In Istanbul, every stretch of coastline is unique—shaped by its exposure to the wind, the nature of its currents, the depth and form of the seabed, and countless other qualities. Fishing practices and the communities formed around them vary accordingly. For the coastal fisher, the sea is not mere scenery but a lived ecology, known through its inner workings and dynamics. Sitting by the shore with a cup of tea does not grant knowledge of what lies beneath the surface, nor does it establish a reciprocal relationship with the sea. Looking at the view is not the same as seeing the sea. In this sense, fishing is a way of seeing, and coastal fishers truly see the sea; they enter into a state of being with it. As Helen Czerski argues, one of the greatest causes for today’s global crisis is precisely the invisibility of the sea;6 we perceive it not as a presence but as an absence. That is why we so readily treat it as a place to dump whatever we no longer want. Addressing individual problems cannot bring about genuine recovery because the underlying issue is systemic. Mucilage, too, is ultimately a failure to relate, and it can only be overcome if we begin to perceive the sea as an integrated, complex system—a dynamic world intertwined with our own lives.

We continue in Üsküdar with those who see the sea as a living presence. Müge is the daughter of Güngör Bey, who moved from Manisa to Istanbul to study. She was born and raised in Üsküdar. Both an urban planner and an active figure in local governance, she is deeply connected to the city in multiple ways. Speaking of her home, the sea, and the opposite shore, she describes a life beyond the romanticized image of Istanbul. The reality of that life is this: it is a space of adaptation, negotiation, and coexistence without uniformity. This is something Güngör Bey and the local community keep repeating: everyone has different opinions, but we do not hurt or upset one another. They speak of friendships spanning twenty to thirty years, of mutual aid, and of collective labor.

Given that Güngör Bey moved to Istanbul for his education, it becomes clear that belonging is not simply a matter of being born and raised somewhere. Not only Güngör Bey, but many members of the Kuşkonmaz fishing community—who stand shoulder to shoulder by the sea throughout the seasons, enduring all kinds of weather and marine conditions—once “came” to Istanbul. Much like the gardeners along the historic city walls, who “came” from Cide in Kastamonu yet continue, to this day, a unique horticultural practice stretching back 1,600 years. A similar principle applies to plants: wild or migratory species take root in the damaged surfaces of the city, forming an invisible network of repair that restores disrupted ecological systems.7 Locality, then, is not a fixed geographic anchor but a web of strong, harmonious relations—of care, attention, and presence. Interestingly, like many fish in the Bosphorus, the bonito8—so abundant in the Byzantine period that it even appeared on coins—is a migratory species; as are bluefish, mackerel, horse mackerel, and anchovy. As Karekin Deveciyan writes at the very beginning of his book, Türkiye’de Balık ve Balıkçılık [Fish and Fishing in Turkey]: “Fish known in Turkey as migratory or seasonal spend the winter in the deepest waters of the Mediterranean or the Sea of Marmara and then pass through the Bosphorus to reach the Black Sea in the milder seasons. Fishermen call these movements anavasya (ascent) and, conversely, katavasya (descent).”9

The migratory species have not yet arrived. There are no fish in Üsküdar—neither bluefish nor bonito. Although it is autumn, the sea temperature still feels like summer. Our anticipation falls flat: we had planned to watch Güngör Bey fish while chatting. He had even prepared a fishing guide for us. Instead, we sit beneath the chinaberry tree —the one that shaded them all summer— near their spot by the Radar. Babiş, a dog rescued from the sea, dozes among the many cats, dogs, and birds in their care.

There may be no fish, but the conversation endures. “In Istanbul, people can recognize us Üsküdarites at a glance by the way we fish—and they don’t like us much,” says the Kuşkonmaz community, followed by proud laughter. Fishing along this rugged shoreline, where opposing currents intertwine, is difficult; as a result, the fishers here are more skilled, more athletic, and perhaps a little more flamboyant than those on other shores. We listen to the finely tuned practices of this world, learning new words and expressions along the way. They call cormorants “tax collectors”—they always take their share of the catch. Horse mackerel are “the beans of the sea”—if there’s nothing else, they will keep you fed.

A small glossary begins to take shape here:

• elevator
• surfcasting
• playful
• fishing ground

November 18, 2025

On November 18, we are back in Üsküdar with Eylül and Mete. This time we meet not under the chinaberry tree but beside Kuşkonmaz Mosque. Once again, a vast, alien expanse of concrete has been laid down as a so-called public space. Oblivious to both the fertile, salty waters and earthquakes, this surface ignores the layered history beneath it and, instead of improving the place, diminishes it. It is a top-down intervention, conceived by a single authority and imposed without consultation. Yet, as Güngör Bey beautifully puts it: “Not everything here is designed; it is an accumulation.” What would a shoreline look like if it were designed with the recognition that the waters before it were a historically registered inshore fishing ground, and with coastal fishers and their practices in mind?

This time, the south-westerly wind is blowing. There are hardly any bluefish, yet the Kuşkonmaz community manages to catch two, which are set aside for Müge. There may be no bluefish, but there is bonito, and I take those. About a month after this beautiful evening, tuna appears in the Bosphorus. “Tuna are not foreign to these waters; on the contrary, they are ancient visitors to this geography,” says Mert Gökalp. “The question is not why the fish have returned, but whether we, as humans, can make that return lasting. Ancient cities inscribed their relationship with the sea on their coins. Today, we are being tested on whether we can protect that same sea and those same fish.”10

As this essay comes to an end, it is now April, and Üsküdar feels heavy-hearted. Let the fisherman’s smile lift our spirits:

“When I think of Istanbul,
A great dalyan comes to mind
Some stretch
Like a rusty spider web in Beykoz
Others loll about in Fenerbahçe
In it, forty tuna 
Turn like forty millstones
Tuna—the king of fish—is shot through the eye with a Mauser
Trees topple into the sea
The face of the dalyan turns blood-red
The turquoise waters grow cloudy
Forty tuna in a single haul
The captain’s tongue trips with joy
A gull comes and lands on the mast
Swallows the tossed chub mackerel mid-air
Doesn't wait for another—just goes
The fisherman smiles softly
That gull’s name is Marika, he says
She always comes and goes like this”11

• Radar
• Under the bead tree
• Babiş
• There is no more Sharpsnout seabream
• Who is a Çelebi?
• Sea Snotting Expeditions Presents: Kuşkonmaz Community
• Üsküdar 1: We are where we say “We are in İstanbul”
• Üsküdar 2: There used to be a Şemsi Paşa Square
• Üsküdar 3: The coast was all sandy beach here
• Üsküdar 4: There used to be flying cars
• Üsküdar 5: My family lives in a small village inside Istanbul
• Marmaray made fishing difficult
• We are where the Bosporus meets Marmara
• I was born and raised in Üsküdar
• So that you can save someone who falls into the sea
• Playful
• There are barriers between the sea and the land
• The rescue of Babiş and the teacher from Kuzguncuk from the sea
• Soap and scrub available!
• We should be consulted...
• Solidarity
• Elevator: right current and wind is a must, otherwise the gulls become trouble
• Elevator
• Üsküdar fishers fish tough
• Surf rigs, mock bait, Rapalas
• Surfcasting
• A hundred and ten bonitos
• Fish disposition
• Wait, what, Müge likes fish from the Aegean?!
• We quit diving
• Seabream thief: Yaşar the sea otter
• The crows and gulls all have names, for example Osman
• Crows or eco commune
• Dolphins operate in gangs
• Where we’re sitting now is Babiş’s winter home
• An ode to the Aegean: What money did we find?
• An ode to Istanbul: hazelnut jig, thief, skim rig and voila a juvenile horse mackerel!
• Fish therapy
• Send me your location!
• A Fisherman’s Day—Trial 1
• A Fisherman’s Day—Trial 2
• Every fishing ground has its own specific people
• Üsküdar is one of Istanbul’s hardest fishing grounds
• Fishing ground
• The story of late Uncle Meral
• A Fisherman’s Day—Trial 3
• In August we caught torik, in snowmelt waters horse mackerel
• The pandemic and sea snot
• Cormorants are our tax collectors
• Easy being alpha?!
• There’s something about fishing that binds people together
• Bluefish feat in Lodos wind
• Müge’s bluefish
• Evening call to prayer is recited, it’s time to fish now
• Yusuf, Erdoğan, and Güngör fish through division of labor
• The air pressure has to be above 1013 and below 1018
• You’ll be soaked to your socks
• We’ll cast lines dressed like astronauts, and what we’ll pull out will be army boots
• Bosphorus is exceptional
• Metean roams by recommendation
• Evening prayer at Şemsi Paşa
• Here, not everything is a design; it’s everyone’s accumulated experience
• He doesn’t know
• Casting, don’t lift the rod!
• Would you like some tea?