Dead Red Book bird found in fuel oil on Odesa coast
18 February 17:17
In Odesa region, a dead red-necked loon was found on the coast of the Tuzly Estuaries National Park, which was covered in fuel oil. This was reported by an employee of the national park, ecologist Ivan Rusev, Komersant ukrainskyi reports.
“A dead rare bird listed in the Red Book of Ukraine, the Red-necked Diver, was found again on 5 km of the national park’s spillway, which was covered in fuel oil,” the ecologist wrote.
He emphasized that fuel oil can penetrate the bird’s skin through contamination of its feathers only when the fuel oil is a liquid. Therefore, it is likely that the bird was at the epicenter of the fuel oil at the beginning of the environmental disaster in mid-December 2024 in the Kerch Strait. Two months later, the dead loon drifted to the Odesa coast, 630 km from the Kerch Strait accident.
The bird will be sent for research.
The ecologist noted that last week experts did not find any oil spots on the territory of the Tuzly Estuaries National Park. However, the substance still remains on the embankment within the Liman community.
“There is still a lot of fuel oil drifting in the Black Sea, and its small fractions can be released at any time anywhere along the coast,” added Rusev.
New emissions of fuel oil, which leaked as a result of the accident of two Russian tankers on December 15, were recorded in 14 locations in the Black Sea.
In the temporarily occupied Crimea, data on the number of waterfowl that died as a result of the fuel oil spill after the Russian tanker accident was classified.
