In three days, municipal workers from the Lyman community of the Odesa region collected more than 400 kilograms of fuel oil that was released after the accident of Russian tankers in the Kerch Strait. In the future, the figure may increase to 500 kilograms.
This was reported by Ivan Rusev, Doctor of Biological Sciences, Head of the Research Department of the Tuzlivski Estuaries National Park in the Odesa region.
According to him, municipal workers collect fuel oil without mechanical devices and store it in special rooms. The mechanism of utilization and the funds for such a procedure are currently unknown.
In the Odesa region, on January 28, new areas were found on the coast near the western part of the Dzhantsheysky and Sasyk estuaries, near the Danube Biosphere Reserve, where fuel oil was dumped after the accident of Russian tankers in the Kerch Strait. The fractions of fuel oil are located at a distance of 30 to 50 meters from the edge of the sea water. Their sizes vary from 0.5 to 5 centimeters. Then, one kilometer of the coast was recorded where there is fuel oil. The width reaches one meter. But there is a section of the spillway 200 meters long and up to 6 meters wide.
The communityʼs utility workers have been working all day to collect the fuel oil. However, there is one more area that has not been cleaned up.
Local government reaction
According to Rusev, the Odesa Regional Military Administration is fully responsible for these areas. He explained that the sandy sea bank in this place is water fund land, and the OVA must either itself or give instructions to the Lyman community to carry out remedial work within the limits of pollution.
The biologist said that on January 27, a meeting of the technogenic and ecological commission of the Odesa Regional Administrative Organization was held, but a clear action plan and any practical measures to clean the sandbank areas from fuel oil are unknown.
“But neither the head of the Lyman community, indicated in the topic of the meeting, nor the head of the Tuzlivsky Lymany NPE, whose employees were the first to discover fuel oil on the coast and have experience in rapid response, was invited to this meeting,” Rusev writes.
He says that the local authorities gave instructions to the Lyman community and the Tuzlivsky Lyman National Park, but did not provide either methods, means of collection, transport, or funds to dispose of petroleum products.
According to Rusev, the national park administration sent a letter to the Department of Ecology of the Regional State Administration on January 13, 2025 about the algorithm for responding to the accident of fuel oil tankers. But the national park did not receive a response.
What preceded
An accident involving two Russian oil tankers occurred in the Kerch Strait on December 15. The leaked fuel oil reached the coast of the Odesa region on January 24.
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.
In three days, they cleared an area 200 meters long and 30-70 centimeters wide — a total of up to 4 kg of fuel oil was collected. During this time, they explored about 40 kilometers of coastline.
However, there are no guarantees that fuel oil will not wash ashore again, because millions of small fractions are still drifting in the waters of the northwestern part of the Black Sea, noted Ivan Rusev, head of the scientific research department of the Tuzlivski Limany National Park in the Odesa region.
"Resources are needed to quickly identify, urgently collect, and destroy this threat, and the national park simply does not have them," he emphasized.
According to Rusev, a rare bird from the Red Book of Ukraine, the red-necked loon, contaminated with fuel oil, was also washed ashore. This is not the first case with birds. Earlier, a bird was found in fuel oil and sent for research to the Ukrainian Center for Marine Ecology to find out whether it was related to the fuel oil spill in the Black Sea after the accident with oil tankers. Rusev noted that the head of the center refused to take the bird for research, "for fear of bird flu or something else".
In early January this year, 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 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.
Since the tanker accident, animal rights activists have recorded 58 cases of cetacean deaths. 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.
For more news and in-depth stories from Ukraine please follow us on X.