Russian fuel oil washed up on the coast of the national park in Odesa region

Employees of the Tuzly Estuaries National Park found fuel oil on the park's coast, which they collected and handed over to Vladyslav Balynskyi's private laboratory.

According to Ivan Rusev, a staff member of the National Park, Tuzly Estuaries employees spent three days examining the coast and eventually discovered a 200-meter-long, 30-70-centimeter-wide area contaminated with fuel oil of 3-4 millimeters in size, freshly dumped on Sunday.

"Now there is no fuel oil on the coast of the national park, but there is no guarantee that the sea will not throw it out again tomorrow, as millions of small fractions are still drifting in the waters of the Northwest Black Sea. We need resources to promptly detect, urgently collect and destroy this threat, and the national park simply does not have them," noted Ivan Rusev.

He also noted that nearby the sea also threw out a rare bird (Red Book of Ukraine) in fuel oil - a red-necked diver, which was again carried out to sea by the waves.

On Friday, January 24, after storms on the coast of Odesa region, fuel oil was found that had fallen into the sea as a result of the accident of Russian tankers in the Kerch Strait. The fuel oil washed up on the sandy spoil in the Katranka recreational area near the Danube Biosphere Reserve and the Tuzly Estuaries National Nature Park.

The accident in the Kerch Strait became known on December 15. The shipwreck occurred near Cape Panagia in the Temryuksky district of Krasnodar Krai, in the southwest of the Taman Peninsula, 12 kilometers from the village of Taman. It is the eastern entrance to the Kerch Strait from the Black Sea. According to official data, both tankers could have been carrying about 8,000 tons of oil products.

On January 10, 2025, another oil leak occurred in the Kerch Strait from the stern of the sunken Russian tankerVolgoneft. This part of the vessel ran aground near Taman in the Temryutsk district.

On January 11, a concentrated oil slick was spotted in the Sea of Azov, just 10 kilometers south of the tip of the Berdiansk Spit, with an approximate area of 300 square kilometers and stretching for almost 100 kilometers along the Bilosaray Bay.

Meanwhile, 60 tons of fuel oil-contaminated sand and soil were collected in Crimea over the week, and 21 tons were collected in Sevastopol.

Кирило Бойко