Experts have said 32 dolphins have died since oil oozed out of two tankers in stormy weather three weeks ago near southern Russia.
The spill happened in the Kerch Strait waterway, which separates the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula from Russia’s southern Krasnodar region.
The deaths are “most likely related to the fuel oil spill”, said the Delfa Dolphin Rescue and Research Centre based in Sochi on Russia’s Black Sea coast.
The centre wrote on the Telegram app that a total of 61 dead cetaceans – a group of mammals that includes whales, dolphins and porpoises – had been recorded since the disaster. Around 29 dolphins appeared to have died before the spill, it said.
“Judging by the condition of the bodies, most likely the majority of these cetaceans died in the first 10 days after the disaster. And now the sea continues to wash them up,” the centre wrote, noting that most of the dead dolphins were from the endangered Azov species.
On Saturday, Moscow-appointed officials in Russian-occupied Crimea announced a regional emergency, after oil washed up 155 miles (250km) away on the shores of Sevastopol, the largest city in Crimea and a major port on the Black Sea.
By Sunday, officials and volunteers from Russia’s emergencies ministry had removed more than 96,000 tons of contaminated sand and soil from the shoreline of the Krasnodar region’s Anapa and Temryuk districts.
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Previously, the ministry had estimated up to 200,000 tons in total may have been contaminated with a low-grade heavy oil product called mazut.
Russian President Vladimir Putin called the oil spill an “ecological disaster”.
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Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office, last month said the oil spill was a “large-scale environmental disaster” and called for additional sanctions on Russian tankers.
The Kerch Strait is an important global shipping route, connecting the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea.
It is also a source of tension between warring Russia and Ukraine since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.
In 2016, Ukraine took Moscow to the Permanent Court of Arbitration, accusing its neighbour of trying to seize control of the area illegally. In 2021, Russia closed the strait for several months.
