A mathematical model of marine mucilage, the case of the liga on the Basque coast

In this paper we are interested in modeling the production of mucus by diatoms under the constraint of a nutrient limitation. The initial questioning comes from the observation of the so-called ‘‘liga’’ on the Aquitaine coast. The biological origin of the phenomenon is presented and discussed based on the existing litterature.A mathematical model is proposed and its theoretical properties are analized: well-posedness and differentiability with respect to the model parameters.Finally, numerical experiments are provided, investigating the possibility of parameter identification for the model using chemostat-type experiments.