HomeWorldMarine life. The war in Ukraine could be...

Marine life. The war in Ukraine could be fatal


Opposite the city of Sevastopol, on the Crimean coast bordering the Black Sea, Russian military forces opened fire on March 22. a salvo of eight 3M-14 Kalibr cruise missiles, launched from a Buyan-class ship northwest into central Ukraine. The moment was captured on video, showing the projectiles with a glowing tail streaking across the sky above the chopping waves of the sea, leaving behind a trail of smoke in the sky at sunset.

Long before they hit Ukrainian territory — shells like these hit cities like Kharkiv to destroy government buildings — the missiles began taking their toll in the deep sea. A sound waves from the shock produced at launch and then the whistles they emit along the way they spread out in all directions and spread out into the sea. In liquid media, they spread even faster, three to four times faster than in air. And that is having consequences for marine life.

Evidence that the war in Ukraine is also taking its toll on animal life has already washed ashore more than 400 kilometers from the port of Sevastopol. Four days after that launch, the Istanbul-based Turkish Foundation for Marine Research announced that it had detected a ‘Unusual increase’ in dead short-beaked common dolphins whose bodies ended up stranded on the beaches of the western coast of Turkey, facing the Black Sea. The phenomenon began to be observed during the previous month, which coincides with the first days of the armed conflict in Ukraine.

All the dolphins were found in the sands of the sea basin between the town of Ormanli and the city of Sinope, some 322 kilometers apart. The cases registered in the Marine Mammal Landing Network all have an explanation: the animals drowned “due to interaction with fishing”. The mystery does not lie precisely in the direct cause of death, but in how so many cases of this type are being detected at this time of year: “It is still not clear why they are concentrated in this region at this time of year and why accidentally. The catches with nets have increased a lot”, explains the Foundation in information sent to the Observer.

Why have at least 80 dolphins died in the Black Sea since the start of the war in Ukraine?

There are four theories on the table: deviations in dolphin routes could be related to climate change, unusual boat traffic, could be explained by an adaptation to fish migrations or “intense surface and underwater military activities in the north”. The latter is, however, the most accepted explanation, because “there has been an excess of noise pollution” since the war began, confirmed João Correia, a marine biologist and founder of Flying Sharks, an organization that defends the sustainability of the oceans. to the observer.. “This problem occurs more frequently all over the world. In the Black Sea, which is a relatively small sea, the war is having a profound impact”, says the marine biologist.

To navigate, dolphins use a sense called echolocation, which works similarly to sonar on a ship. Inspired air to the surface through the hole at the top of the head (the spiracle) accumulates in the nasal sacs, and then is pressed along the channels, causing tissues to vibrate.

These vibrations are expelled into the water through the melon, a lump made of fatty, fluid tissue on the dolphin’s head, which directs sound waves at a frequency so high they are inaudible to humans: ultrasound. When they hit an object and are redirected, dolphins pick up sound waves through their jaws and ears. The longer it takes for the sound waves to return to the animals, the further away the objects hit by them will be. “They make a three-dimensional map of the reality around them.”, summarizes João Correia. Just like whales or bats.

But sound waves produced and emitted by warships (which also use sonar to scan the bottom of the sea), Military planes, missiles and bombings disrupt dolphin echolocation, causing disorientation and general malaise. “It has an impact on the immune system and motivates attacks by pathogens that would otherwise be harmless to the animal’s body,” explains the marine biologist. It is enough for the dolphins to develop meningitis to be sentenced to death.

Toxic gas from Azovstal could make the Black Sea uninhabitable

Therefore, this may be one of the most obvious consequences of the impact of the war in Ukraine on the ecosystem. But 415 kilometers away, on the other side of Crimea and on the Ukrainian coast bordering the Sea of ​​Azov, there is another disaster waiting to happen. Over the course of 82 days of resistance at the Azovstal steel plant, Russian forces shelled the facility, often in violation of agreed ceasefires to evacuate wounded soldiers, in an attempt to gain full control of Mariupol. But one of the plant’s infrastructures is a tank with thousands of tons of a concentrated solution of hydrogen sulfidea gas that is denser than air and is highly corrosive and poisonous.

If this compound, a by-product of the use of coke ovens (fuel derived from bituminous coal) in the production of iron and steel, spills into the water, “There is a threat of complete extinction” of marine life in the Sea of ​​Azov.

This was warned in mid-May by an official source from the Mariupol City Council, whose mayor, Vadym Boychenko, requested “immediate entry to the compound of international and UN experts to study the situation and avoid a world-class environmental catastrophe”. If contamination of the Sea of ​​Azov with hydrogen sulfide is confirmed, the problem would not be stuck in that air mass: the poisonous compound could migrate to the Black Sea through the Kerch Strait; and from there to the Mediterranean through the Bosphorus Strait.

Being isolated, the Sea of ​​Azov is one of the biggest concerns of environmentalists, along with the Danube River delta and the Odessa Gulf. “This is where biodiversity is most fragile, these regions are among the migratory destinations of birds”, explains the Turkish Foundation for Marine Research. It is in these waters that an endangered red algae, the phyllophora, is home to marine species such as bivalves, sponges and sea squirts.

But in the Black Sea the situation is equally worrying because it is already naturally rich in hydrogen sulphide: 92% of the water below 150 meters contains this chemical compound. This is because this sea is practically isolated from the open oceans and accumulates this product in depth, coming from the decomposition of organic matter coming from the surface or carried there by rivers.

Now the Black Sea is highly stratified. On the one hand, when it receives water from the Mediterranean, it sinks deeper because it is salty and, therefore, also denser, mixing with the hydrogen sulfide that it already has naturally. More on the surface is the fresh water that this same sea receives from the rivers.

It is this most superficial layer that works as a “shield” that prevents the hydrogen sulfide present in depth from contaminating the entire sea and other bodies of water with which it is in contact. But if this “shield” is contaminated with water from the Sea of ​​Azov contaminated by leaks from the Azovstal, the new sulfide will mix with layers of water that are not naturally polluted.

It is a real but unlikely danger, just as it was when it was feared that Russian military forces would expose radioactive material from the Chernobyl and Zaporizhia nuclear power plants. Is that the pollution of the Sea of ​​Azov with hydrogen sulfide it would be a natural disaster, not only for Ukraine itself, but for all the territories washed by those waters, and that includes Russia. and the annexed region of Crimea.

And, according to the U.S. Department of Health at the University of Virginia, once released, this chemical can cause respiratory and eye irritation, pulmonary edema, olfactory nerve paralysis, and, at very high concentrations, (200 to 300 parts per million), immediate death.

The Zaporizhia nuclear power plant was a battlefield, and the Russians already control the facilities. What is the worst case and how to avoid it?

Ship fuel and lost mines threaten marine life and fishermen

Other problems may be less preventable, warned the Turkish Foundation for Marine Research: “The threat to species that choose these regions to breed, feed, migrate and spawn, where shelling and shooting occur daily, is unavoidable.” No one knows how much fuel escaped from the ships hit in the airstrikes. and sank off the coast of Mariupol, facing the Sea of ​​Azov. But the poisonous gases from that gasoline will be released into the atmosphere and will inevitably also make their way to land when deposited by rain.

The Dnieper River, transformed into a veritable battlefront, is being polluted with bases and toxic chemicals released by munitions on both sides of the barricade. But this is the same stream that serves as a source of agricultural irrigation; and where the drinking water that is consumed in the cities that wind along the river comes from. According to the Turkish authorities, there is even evidence that the river bed is being changed to act as an obstacle against attackers — but there’s a flip side to this: Contaminants are also washed into areas where they might not otherwise arrive as quickly. It’s “hydraulic warfare,” says the Marine Research Foundation.

Agreement with Russia and Ukraine to protect the Black Sea could be violated

But this may violate the Convention on the Protection of the Black Sea against Pollution, also known as the Bucharest Convention. This is an agreement signed between the six coastal states of the sea in April 1992 —Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine— in which they committed to three points: the control of land-based sources of pollution, the limitation waste disposal and joint action in case of accidents, including oil spills. The ultimate mission was to “prevent, reduce and control pollution” in the Black Sea.

Even so, Russia itself has admitted that it is using the waterways to its advantage, laying mines mainly in the Sea of ​​Azov and the Kerch Strait. This compromises shipping and trade routes, Turkey notes, and has even forced a ban on night fishing between the Turkish city of Igneada and Kefken Island. It is “an understandable situation”, considered the foundation, since the objective is to safeguard the lives of fishermen. But it can have disastrous economic consequences: “In the Black Sea, Turkey’s fish stock is like Ukraine’s grain stock. More than 60% of Turkey’s fish catch comes from the Black Sea.”

Only time will tell the true extent of the environmental impact of the war in Ukraine. There are no statistics on how many species of fish and how many individuals of each species died from mines that fell into bodies of water around Ukraine. Turkey even warns that this battlefront is frankly ignored by international authorities, and draws the attention of the United Nations “before it is too late”.

Source: Observadora

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