Oil reaching the open sea following an accident during the loading of a tanker in west Russia has coalesced into a slick the size of a medium-sized city. Accoring to new reports by ecological watch groups on Wednesday it is polluting resort beaches and killing wildlife hundreds of kilometers away on Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula.
The leading edge of the slick has washed ashore near the southern resort town of Alushta in the Russian-occupied Crimea region more than 250 kilometers (155 miles) from the scene of the accident, the independent Russian information platform Agency News reported.
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Sergei Stanichniy, a Krasnodar region official, told the official Russian state news agency TASS that the drifting spill consisted of at least ten tons of oil covering an area of about 350 square kilometers (135 square miles).
The Ukrainian Black Sea news and information platform Krymsky Veter in a Wednesday report estimated the size of the “main slick” at 214 square kilometers (82.6 square miles) and was more than 100 kilometers (63 miles) from end to end and slowly moving east with the current.
Ukrainian estimate of the oil slick covering sea from Russia’s Krasnodar region to the Russia-occupied Crimea peninsula.
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The Russian state maritime watch group RosMorRechFlot announced that a “minor spill” had taken place during loading of the Turkish tanker T. Semahat at the port of Novorossiysk. It claimed that the port’s emergency response teams had “quickly contained” the spill and there was no significant threat to people or wildlife.
An announcement from the Russian state national ecological watch agency Rosprirodnadzor, issued the same day and published by TASS, put the volume of fuel spilled at “about 30 cubic meters of oil” and declared “there is no threat of its spreading.”
Other official Russian statements told taxpayers a maximum one ton of fuel had been spilled creating a 30-square kilometer (11.5-square mile) slick, and that emergency response workers had contained the spill – which verified reports contradicted.
Russia’s Black Sea coast and the Russia-occupied southern Crimea peninsula are top beach holiday destinations and the Kerch Strait and the wetlands around it are a major habitat for fish and birds.
By Sunday, local news agencies and ecological watch groups were warning an oil slick of several hundred square kilometers had despite official statements formed and was moving west. Some describing the spill as the worst pollution event seen in the region since December, when two tankers loaded with crude sank off shore Novorossiysk in a storm.
Video from the resort town Anapa published by blogger Yuriy Ozarovskiy on Tuesday showed belts of tar running the length of the local beach, and normally clear water covered by a brown film. Waves were churning the oil with the water, images showed. Other Crimea-based social media reported beaches along a 70-km. stretch of the Crimea coast had been hit by islands of oil detaching themselves from the main slick off shore.
According to beachgoers, even thinly-hit sectors of the shoreline were unpleasant for swimming and bathing, because of the petroleum smell and film sticking to the swimmer after exiting the water. The independent Russian news agency Astra in a critical report of official announcements about the spill said: “Announcements by Rosprirodnadzor…that the spill was controlled and that nothing entered the environment, turned out to be a lie.”
Content published by Greenpeace on Aug. 29 showed satellite imagery confirming the spill was uncontained. A statement called on Russia to clean up the spill and be more protective of the environment.The local ecological protection group Zhemchuzhinaya Rehabilitation Center reported injured and dead birds were being found “day and night”, and criticized state agencies like Rosprirodnadzor for misinforming the public about the scale of the spill. Of 24 oil-saturated birds brought to the center since Saturday, three had died from asphyxiation, chemical burns or neurological symptons brought on by poisoning, and survival of several others was still in doubt, the volunteer-run group said in a statement.
Most of the birds harmed by the pollution were a Black-Necked Grebe, an aquatic fowl relatively common to the Kerch Strait wetlands, images published by the group showed. Some dead and injured birds were collected around Anapa, the group said.
Ukrainian navy spokesmen on Wednesday confirmed Russian authorities had been unable to control the spill, and named the eastern Black Sea and Russian Federation shoreline as the most likely placed the origin of the oil slick.
Black-necked Grebe soaked with oil following a spill in the Russian Black Sea port Novorossiysk. According to the wildlife assistance group Zhemchuzhinaya Rehabilitation Center, this bird was contaminated near the Crimea resort city Alushta, some 250 km. from the site of the spill. Image published by the center on Tuesday.
Ukrainian estimate of the oil slick covering sea from Russia’s Krasnodar region to the Russia-occupied Crimea peninsula.
