Looking like ghosts, white silhouettes wander on the beach of Anapa, plunged into darkness, lit only by a pale ray of moon. A moving shadow in the distance, a noise that breaks the sound of the waves: you have to be on the lookout for the slightest sign of life to spot an oiled animal in agony. Dolphins, dogs, birds, hundreds of them every day are recovered and transferred to the rescue center, not far from there, a remodeled car wash station. Many were already on the verge of extinction.
“Looking at him, I cry with shame, because he is in no way responsible for human stupidity,” confesses Ekaterina, rubbing the plumage of a bird with starch, so that the white powder soaks the black mass . In another basin, the bird is washed with dishwashing liquid. Her probability of survival is only 10% but the pink-haired Muscovite does not hesitate to sacrifice her sleepless nights in the name of the survival, perhaps, of the species.
3,000 tonnes of fuel oil in the sea
Around 3,000 tonnes of fuel oil spilled into the Black Sea after the sinking of two Russian tankers on December 15 in the Kerch Strait, between Russia and Crimea. Up to 200,000 tonnes of soil may have been polluted, according to the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources. “The current disaster is a copy of that of 2007, during which 3,000 tonnes of oil also spilled into the sea. At the time, 30,000 birds were dead,” estimates Georgi Kavanosyan, who coordinates the volunteers. According to this specialist, it will take ten years to eliminate the consequences.
Indeed, cleaning up oil products in the area is “an almost impossible task,” according to ecologist Dmitry Markin. This type of heavy fuel oil of M100 quality “does not float on the surface” and “there is no proven technology in the world to eliminate it in water”, affirms the Ministry of Transport, which considers that the solution is to collect fuel oil on the coast. The Russian authorities therefore claim to have mobilized more than 10,000 people and 700 units of equipment, in addition to volunteers.
“Where is the technical equipment? »
Largely insufficient, protest the volunteers on site. There are thousands of them, coming from all over Russia, at their own expense, by train, by car, and the craziest by bike, to clean the beaches. “It’s a huge task, which hurts your back a lot. Filled bags become heavy. However, they have to be dragged to the common pile. The stench gives you a terrible headache,” says Alexandra, a frail-faced thirty-something, manager of a hotel in Anapa, who hopes to save her summer season.
-After spending two hours collecting the oiled sand, the young woman collapsed, exhausted. “There are, of course, a lot of questions. Where is the Ministry of Emergency Situations? Where is the technical equipment: bulldozers, trucks? This would make our work so much easier! »
On the beaches, bags pile up as far as the eye can see, with no established destination. Those who are not transferred in time to the storage sites, already overwhelmed, end up at sea again, at the first storm. The head of the Russian Investigative Committee ordered the opening of criminal proceedings to find out the destination of the fuel oil.
