An accident involving two Russian oil tankers occurred in the Kerch Strait on December 15. The leaked fuel oil has already reached the coast of the Odesa region.
This was reported by Ivan Rusev, Doctor of Biological Sciences, Head of the Research Department of the Tuzlivski Estuaries National Park in the Odessa region.
After storms, fuel oil washed onto a sandbank in the Katranka recreational area near the Danube Biosphere Reserve and the Tuzli Estuaries National Nature Park.
According to Rusev, the national park team is already examining various areas of the embankment, and the administration will continue to provide information about the extent of the contamination.
"The consequences of such environmental disasters have no limits, and thousands of tons of fuel oil spilled into the sea will cause great harm to the natural ecosystems of the Black Sea and its biodiversity," the scientist believes.
He said that earlier a bird was found in fuel oil and sent for research to the Ukrainian Center for Marine Ecology to determine whether it was related to the fuel oil spill in the Black Sea after the oil tanker accident. Rusev noted that the head of the center refused to take the bird for research, "for fear of bird flu or something else".
Consequences of the oil tanker accident in the Kerch Strait
An accident involving two Russian oil tankers, “Volgoneft-212” and “Volgoneft-239”, occurred in the Kerch Strait on December 15. Since then, animal rights activists have recorded 58 deaths of cetaceans.
Fuel oil was recorded off the coast of Feodosia, Alushta, and Sudak. These are three popular resorts in Crimea. Satellite images from January 4 probably show surface pollution in these areas. It is currently unclear whether there is fuel oil in the area of these resorts and at depth.
M100 fuel oil, which leaked from Russian tankers, freezes and sinks in winter. It will start to float in summer, when the temperature reaches +25 °C. The Black Sea warms up to this temperature in summer at a depth of 15-20 meters. The depth of the coastal area near Anapa and the southern part of the Kerch Peninsula does not reach 20 meters.
In January, satellite images indicated that fuel oil had likely stopped leaking from tankers.
On Sunday, January 5, the occupation governor of Sevastopol Mykhailo Razvozhayev said that about 18 tons of soil contaminated with fuel oil had been collected from the cityʼs beaches. Sevastopol is the westernmost part of the southern coast of Crimea.
The first traces of the environmental disaster were also found on the coast in Georgia. A bird contaminated with fuel oil was found in the village of Ureki. However, this does not mean that the pollution has reached Georgia: some birds, even contaminated with fuel oil, are able to fly about 300 km from the accident site.
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