Black Sea Oil Spill Ravages Wildlife

Nov. 14, 2007 -- A major oil spill off the southern coast of Russia could take months to clear, a top environmentalist said on Wednesday as the first charges were brought over the accident.

Some 2,000 tons of fuel oil seeped into environmentally sensitive waters of the Kerch Strait in the northeastern corner of the Black Sea, after a fierce storm on Sunday wrecked five ships including an oil tanker.

"It will take nearly a week to clear the coast of pollution and months to eliminate fuel oil from the sea surface," Igor Chestin, head of the Russian branch of the environmental group WWF, said at a briefing in Moscow.

"The area is at risk of an environmental catastrophe," he said.

Officials said earlier that 30,000 birds and 9,000 fish have died.

The level of oil spilled in the Kerch Strait, some 750 miles south of Moscow, is 50 times the limit allowed for fishing, environmental monitoring agency Rosgidromet said in a statement on Wednesday.

The effects of the spill are likely to affect the environment in the area for up to 10 years, Greenpeace official Alexei Kiselyov said at the briefing in Moscow. He said between 300 and 400 tons of oil had sunk to the seabed.

Prosecutors are looking into the possibility that the damaged ships were designed for use on rivers and were unable to cope with the rough sea weather, prosecutors said Wednesday.

"The boats which were shipwrecked may not have had the right to sail at sea," Yelena Velikova, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor's office in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don said.

Harbour officials and the captains of the vessels were being investigated.

Russian prosecutors on Wednesday also opened a case against the director of Port Kavkaz, Andrei Iovlev, for "failing to ensure the safety of ships in the Kerch Strait," Velikova said.

The body of three sailors were washed ashore on Monday after the storm. Another body, believed to be a sailor, was found in Ukrainian waters on Wednesday, Ukraine's transport ministry said.

Nineteen sailors are believed to be missing after the storm.

Viktor Zubakin, president of the Union for the Protection of Birds, said the birds affected by the spill, which took place along an important migration route, included 11 endangered species.

"The majority of birds covered with fuel oil die quickly of the cold as their feathers are unable to protect them," he said.