The Russian-flagged ship Sophia was likely to blame for the major spill of oil products discovered near Anapa last weekend, Igor Shkardyuk, a representative of the environmental project Transparent World, told the BBC Russian Service on April 17.
The leak of crude oil or heavy fuel oil was detected by the Sentinel-1 satellite and occurred on the evening of April 7. A week later, by April 14, the area of the oil slick exceeded 200 square metres, and the slick began to split into parts. The wind carried part of the pollution to the Utrish Nature Reserve.
Igor Shkardyuk said that to clean the Black Sea after the oil spill, three ships of the Marine Rescue Service were used. According to him, this is not enough to collect a significant portion of the leak.
According to preliminary estimates, between 300 and 350 tons of oil products may have entered the sea. The BBC wrote that about 28 tons of the oil-containing mixture were collected from the surface of the water.
The Krasnodar Territory’s operational headquarters previously claimed that the oil spill may have occurred due to Ukrainian drone strikes on civilian ships in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov. Waterfowl killed or injured by oil spills.