KRASNODAR, December 23. /TASS/. Environmentalists have discovered eight more dead dolphins along the Krasnodar Region's coastline following an oil spill caused by a tanker crash, Director of the Scientific-Ecological Center for Dolphin Rescue called Delpha Tatyana Beley told TASS.
"Four [dead dolphins were found on the beach] in Aleksino, three more [on the beach] Volochaevsky and one on the Sudzhuk Spit. These are the minimum numbers," the agency source said. She specified that these were new cases of dolphin deaths after the accident in Novorossiysk.
Earlier, Beley said that 10 dead harbor porpoises were found. The oil spill could have been the cause of their deaths.
The Telegram channel of the administration of the Eastern district of Novorossiysk, in turn, reported that experts will survey the shore of the Volochayevsky beach, and dead mammals will be removed from its territory.
On December 15, the Volgoneft-212 and Volgoneft-239 tankers sank in the Kerch Strait area in the Black Sea amid a storm. One sailor died, and the rest were evacuated. According to emergency services, the tankers were carrying about 9,200 tons of fuel oil. An oil spill occurred in the Black Sea as a result of the accident, and clean-up operations are underway — a working group of over 10,000 people was assembled to carry out the emergency response effort. According to Russian Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Alexander Kozlov, 14,000 tons of oil-contaminated sand have been removed, while the volume of polluted soil may increase to 200,000 tons.