Black Sea dolphins casualties of Russia’s war in Ukraine
Pacing up and down a beach of fine white sand on the Black Sea coast, 63 year-old Ukrainian scientist Ivan Rusev breathes a sigh of relief: he did not find any dead dolphins today.
A few moments earlier he had rushed towards what he thought was a stranded dolphin. Mercifully it turned out only to be “tangled fishing gear”.
Rusev spoke to from the Tuzly Estuaries National Nature Park, a protected area of 280 square kilometres (108 square miles) in the Bessarabia region of south-west Ukraine.
Rusev, whose weather-beaten face is shaded by a hat he brought during adventures in central Asia, is the scientific director of the park.
Now his job entails walking every morning along beaches bordered by anti-tank mines in search of the dolphins that have been washing up here since the beginning of the war.
“We only found three dolphins over our entire 44 kilometres (27 miles) coastline last year,” he
“This year, over the five kilometres (3 miles) that we can still access, we already found 35 of them.”
Much of the coastline has been off-limits to employees of the park since Ukrainian troops took up positions there to prevent any possible Russian sea assault.
This means Rusev and his team cannot say exactly how many dolphins have been stranded in the park or survey the full extent of the damage.
- Dangerous sonars –
In any case, the death toll is “terrifying,” says Rusev, who has been keeping an online diary — now widely followed on Facebook — about the impact of the war on wildlife.
