Environmental disaster off the coast of Kamchatka

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The reason for the death of hundreds of thousands of marine animals, apparently, was the chemical pollution of the water, in which it was previously revealed that the content of oil products was 3, 6 times, phenols - twice.

Dead animals on the Khalaktyrsky beach / © RIA Novosti, Alexander to Piragis

Kamchatka is a Russian peninsula, the shores of which are washed by the Sea of Okhotsk in the west, and the Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea in the east. The region is unique for its landscapes, flora, fauna, many volcanoes and other natural beauties. Despite the remoteness from the central part of Russia and the relative underdevelopment of the infrastructure, it annually attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists, including from abroad.

In recent years, Kamchatka - in particular, the Khalaktyrsky beach with volcanic black sand near Avachinsky Bay, about 30 kilometers from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky - has been especially loved by surfers. They were the first to notice the signs of an ecological disaster.

“Three weeks ago, everyone began to experience strange unpleasant symptoms after surfing. Blurred, dry, painful, and filmy eyes. Sore throat, ligaments swollen and sat down. The taste of the ocean is bitter, not salty, completely unusual.

After a while, we - about 20 people living in the camp, who ride often - were poisoned. We decided it was an intestinal infection. And no parallels were drawn. It was strange, but the water was kind of clear, we attributed this to possible allergic reactions to plankton or other natural biological processes and waited for the predicted storm.

There was a hope that all this would pass with him. But it turned out to be the beginning,”said a local resident and founder of the surfing school Anton Morozov (his story was posted on his instagram by journalist and author of the popular YouTube channel Yuri Dud).

In social networks using the geotag or hashtag #Kamchatka, you can find many photos showing sea animals that have washed ashore: not only octopuses, sea urchins, but even the Far Eastern seal (larga).

According to surfers, after swimming in the ocean, their eyes turned red and swollen, and their eyesight deteriorated for a while. In total, about 30 people were injured, among them teenagers, local residents write: some just walked along the beach and as a result received a mucous burn. And someone, after being in the water, was diagnosed with a chemical burn of the cornea.

“With the right medication, vision should be restored, but no one gives accurate predictions. Tomorrow we are going to have blood tests, as it is not clear what damage has been done to the nervous system and other systems of the body,”wrote the Russian surfing champion Dmitry Ilyasov.

“This has been going on for more than one day. Perhaps some natural process is to blame, and not the games of the military going on in the water. But in response to my stories with a request to help find an ecologist, I received a message from a freediver who was concerned about the strange appearance of sea urchins in the bay.

I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but I remember how in 2014 environmentalists drank valerian for a long time after a grandiose command post exercise on the territory of Khalaktyrsky beach, part of which belongs to the military.

And if the damage to the tundra, the uprooted cedar and the trees crushed by caterpillar machinery in the coastal forest were at least noticeable, then hardly anyone will know about the presence of chemistry in the water, except for surfers and sea mammals, fish, birds, and plants that cannot speak, Five days ago, Elena Goranko, a resident of Kamchatka and a surfer, was on her Instagram account.

After a wave of posts on social networks, the media and local concerns, the authorities drew attention to the problem. The regional hydrometeorological services took water samples from the Khalaktyrsky beach, as well as in the bays of Bolshoy and Malaya Lagernykh and in the Babya bay, where they found the corpses of sea animals.

According to the interim minister of natural resources and ecology of Kamchatka, Alexei Kumarkov, the official research results will be announced on Monday, October 5. However, it is already known that an increased content of petroleum hydrocarbons and phenols was found in the water, Baza reported.

“Maybe the release of marine animals was the result of a storm, but the massive nature suggests that this is due to chemical pollution. Causal relationships will be established by the supervisory authorities,”Kumarkov said in a comment for RIA Novosti.

At the same time, he suggested that an engine oil spill might have occurred in the ocean. “Possibly, from sea vessels that passed through the water area of Avacha Bay.

Perhaps this is due to surges, because in recent days there has been an east wind, and, possibly, all this pollution washed up on the Khalaktyr beach, added the acting minister of natural resources and ecology of the Kamchatka Territory.

Dead Far Eastern seal. Employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Kamchatka Territory during work on the Khalaktyrsky beach in Kamchatka / © RIA Novosti, Alexander Piragis

The press service of the Eastern Military District, in turn, said that the Pacific Fleet was not involved in water pollution near the Khalaktyrsky beach: they had not conducted any exercises in recent months in this area, and the ships of the Navy did not carry out any large consignments of oil products there. were not transported.

The Office of the Investigative Committee for the Kamchatka Territory and the environmental prosecutor's office began checking after media reports about the mass death of marine animals. But so far, law enforcement agencies do not give any assessment, since they are awaiting official results of the analysis of water samples, as well as air and sand.

According to eyewitnesses, the authorities promptly removed the corpses of animals from the Khalaktyrsky beach. “The color of the water is normal, the smell of the air is normal, the beach is completely clean. In the morning, the inspectors of the Nalychevo Natural Park examined the coastal zone of the protected areas - nothing anomalous was recorded,”the regional Ministry of Natural Resources said.

At the same time, some experts suggest that the reason could not have been a one-time release, but a leak of some poisonous substance: after all, when oil products get into the water, a film forms on its surface, which in this case is not observed.

“The pollution there is of a very large scale, since it has been going on for more than two weeks, even after two storms, the situation has not changed much. The fact that the animals died en masse suggests that this is a strong toxin, a poisonous substance.

And these are definitely not petroleum products. Samples must be taken in different places regularly at regular intervals and analyzed for all possible pollutants: arsenic, cyanides … There can be very different toxic substances, they must be looked for, Dmitry Lisitsyn, head of the Sakhalin Ekovahta public organization, told RIA Novosti.

In the first video below, you can see a slick in the ocean, and in the next post - satellite images from Greenpeace, which include the Nalycheva River, which flows into the Avacha Bay.

“Many began to hastily leave the ocean. Symptoms appear even without contact with water. Every hour, new information comes in and recently received satellite images from Greenpeace of the river that flows into the ocean and which, apparently, brought death to all living things.

Pictures in the chronology of the 1st, 9th, 24th September show that on the 9th the river was already pouring tons of poison into the ocean. It turns out that almost a month has passed. There was no reaction to prevent the disaster and save the situation.

Probably, if the people responsible for this event were more courageous and declared their mistake and began rescue operations, the scale of this could be kept under control. But for a month now, poison has been pouring out of the river, which kills everything around,”summed up Anton Morozov.