In March another 130 dolphins died in the Black Sea, they were found off the coast of the Krasnodar region of Russia - scientist
Kyiv • UNN
In March 2024, another 130 dolphins died in the Black Sea off the coast of Russia's Krasnodar Territory, likely due to sonar activity by Russian Navy ships, bringing the total number of dolphin deaths due to the war to several thousand.
In March, another 130 dolphins died in the Black Sea, their bodies were found off the coast of the Krasnodar region of Russia, said Ivan Rusev, head of the research department of the Tuzly Estuaries National Nature Park, UNN reports.
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"Now we have received terrible information about the large-scale death of dolphins - 130 (!) more in March 2024 alone, whose bodies were found off the coast of the Krasnodar Territory - Sochi, Novorossiysk, etc. There are also confirmed findings of several dead dolphins that were washed up again on the shores of Bulgaria," Rusev wrote on Facebook.
He pointed out that "such a terrible situation with dolphins in March alone is a confirmation of the fact that the activity of enemy submarine and surface vessel sonar in that part of the Black Sea, both near Crimea, as we wrote about recently, and near Novorossiysk and Sochi, is the main factor in the continued death of rare Black Sea cetaceans.
"The Russian navy is concentrated in those waters and is constantly on the lookout, using sonar devices that kill marine mammals," he added.
Before the war, he said, dolphin strandings in March were very rare.
"And now, during the war and the influence of the military factor of the racists who attacked Ukraine, we estimate that the real number of deaths in 2024 is already several thousand animals, taking into account the fact that the sea throws out only 5% of the dead bodies... Fortunately, since the middle of the war year 2022, there has been no racist military surface and underwater invasion in the waters of the northwestern part of the sea - off the coast of the Tuzly Estuaries National Nature Park, when there was a terrible mass death of cetaceans for six months, and they were thrown out by the hundreds on different Black Sea shores. We wrote about this many times on our Facebook page and estimated the number of dolphins killed by the war at 50,000 animals," Rusev said.
