After a large fuel oil spill in the Krasnodar region of Russia, eight dead dolphins washed up on the coast of Novorossiysk, and another was found on the beach in the village of Blagoveshchenskaya, SHOT writes, reports UNN.
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According to SHOT, a total of 11 dolphins and 143 birds have died since the accident. So far, volunteers have managed to catch more than 700 birds, most of which have been cleaned and sent to rehabilitation centers.
According to environmentalists, it will take at least 1.5 years to finally clean up the area from fuel oil. In the meantime, heavy fractions of hydrocarbons, according to them, will settle to the bottom of the Black Sea and disrupt the ecosystem.
Dolphins can be poisoned by toxic fish and get into a fuel oil slick. Fuel oil is extremely dangerous for dolphins. If it gets into their stomachs, hypoxia occurs and the animal suffocates. The Black Sea is home to three species of dolphins: the Black Sea bottlenose dolphin, the white-beaked dolphin, and the Azov dolphin. All of them are endangered species.
Yesterday we managed to find the stern of the Volgoneft-212. Today, divers are working at depth. Volunteers on the beaches near Anapa complain about the lack of equipment. They say that fuel oil continues to be taken out of the sea and no one knows how much more there will be. The most difficult situation is now on pebble beaches.
In the Kerch Strait, two Volgoneft tankers had an accident.
Due to the accident of the Russian tankers , the leakage of fuel oil will have catastrophic consequences for the Black Sea marine ecosystem.
On December 20, Natalia Gozak , director of the Greenpeace Ukraine office, statedthat the most catastrophic consequences of the oil spill from Russian tankers in the Black Sea are expected in the coming days, and that pollution could reach the shores of Ukraine.
On December 21, it was reported that oil products from Russian tankers that had been wrecked were found on the shore and in the sea on the occupied Kerch Peninsula.