Dead sailor found, dolphins dying in wake of Black Sea oil spill

Nov 14, 2007, 16:17 GMT

Kiev - Russian rescue crews found another dead sailing on the shores of the Black Sea on Wednesday, as environmental workers reported dolphins and other wildlife dying in the wake of an oil spill.

A Ukrainian navy search team found the floating body of a sailor in the Kerch Strait, a narrow body of water connecting the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.

The victim probably was a crew member of cargo ship Nakhichevan, one of four vessels sunk by a severe storm striking the region on Sunday, according to an Interfax news agency report.

Another four ships went hard aground, and 15 more were damaged by waves topping five metres, and winds in excess of 100 kilometres an hour. The search effort Wednesday was employing boats, helicopters, and scuba divers in an attempt to find survivors.

A Russo-Ukrainian inter-government coordination team raised on Wednesday the number of sailors still thought to be missing to 19 persons. Five men are known to have died as a result of the accidents.

Clearing weather and calming seas allowed an oil spill clean-up effort to go forward on Wednesday. On land some 2,000 workers using shovels and hoses, and including 1,000 student volunteers, cleaned beaches and rocky shore lines on both sides of the Strait.

Boat teams were at the same time attempting to control a massive oil slick left by the tanker Volganeft 123, that split in half before going down.

The tanker had spewed an estimated 2,000 tons of heating oil into the narrow seaway by Tuesday, and was continuing to leak on Wednesday.

Salvage vessels began pumping oil remaining aboard the hulk on Wednesday. They had been unable to do so earlier, because of rough seas.

Estimates of water birds killed or soon to die from the oil spill, the most massive seen in the region since the break-up of the Soviet Union, ranged on Wednesday from 15,000 to 30,000.

Ukraine's Channel 5 television showed images of a 2-metre wide line of tar-like sludge, some 20 centimetres deep and running for kilometres along beaches.

Cold water and air would make a full-clean up of the oil almost impossible, as low temperatures will coagulate much of the fuel into difficult-to-collect blobs, rather than allow it to spread out into a relatively easy-to-control slick, said Viktor Tarasenko, a Crimea- based environmental activist.

As much as 300 tonnes of the oil can or would soon sink to the bottom of the strait, and remain there, he said.

Dying dolphins had cast themselves up on beaches, and a mass die- off of fish was imminent, as a result of the spill, Korrespondent magazine reported.

An additional environmental threat is posed by two cargo ships carrying the toxic element sulphur, that also sank in the storm.

Though a heavily-trafficked seaway, the coast of the Kerch Strait is both a summer resort region and protected wetland in both Russia and Ukraine. Russia's Taman peninsula especially is a popular warm weather vacation area, having seen substantial investment recently in seaside tourism.

The Kerch Strait region is home to 11 endangered bird species, and considered by environmentalists an important wetland supporting regional fish and water fowl stocks.