This paper focuses on sea surface temperature (SST) trends due to the importance of temperature difference in climate change impact research. These trends are not only essential for climate, but they are also important for marine ecosystem. Immigration of fish population due to the temperature changes is expected to cause unexpected economical results. For this purpose, both classical Mann–Kendall, (MK) (Mann in Econom: J Econom Soc 13:245–259, 1945; Kendall in Rank Correlation Methods, Charless Griffin, London, 1975) and innovative trend analysis (ITA) (Sen in J Hydrol Eng 17(9):1042–1046, 2012) methodologies are applied for the SST data records. Monthly SST data are considered along the Black, Marmara, Aegean, and Mediterranean coastal areas in Turkey. SST data are categorized into five clusters considering fish life as “hot,” “warm-hot,” “warm,” “cold,” and “very cold.” According to ITA, SST in all coastal areas tends to increase except for winter season during “very cold” (0–10 °C) temperatures. The temperature changes in both winter and summer seasons are expected to change the marine life, fish population, tourism habit, precipitation regime, and drought feature.