IIn the busy port of Odesa, a science ship lies moored. No one can see firsthand the damage to the Boris Alexander from Russian drone and artillery fire that has battered the port city over the past four years of war in Ukraine. It’s too dangerous, just as no one can fully monitor the damage the war is inflicting on the Black Sea.
“All we can do is wait,” said Dr. Jaroslav Slobodnik, head of the Slovak Republic-based Environmental Research Institute. “The biodiversity landscape has completely changed. Many species appear to have disappeared, but we need more data. The war has made it impossible to collect data.”
Before the war, three types of dolphins lived in the Black Sea. Since the conflict began, parts of poisoned dolphin carcasses that have regularly washed up along Ukraine’s 1,729-mile (2,782-kilometer) coastline have been discovered and counted. About 125 bodies were recorded in the first year of the Russian invasion, and last year scientists recorded 49 bodies.
Anti-tank block on the beach of Odessa. The Black Sea is heavily contaminated with landmines, posing a serious threat to people and marine life. Photo: Alessio Mamo/Guardian
Apart from oil spills and munitions, acoustic interference from military sonar is also a significant threat to cetaceans and is believed to lead to dolphin strandings and deaths. Sonar use by both ships and submarines is likely to be especially active around Kerch Bridge and Russian-controlled areas.
Satellite photo of the Black Sea, Ukraine. Photo: PACE/NASA
But when war rages on, it’s difficult to properly monitor the mammals that are the bellwethers of the Black Sea’s health, or to investigate what’s killing them. In addition to the uninhabited land of Crimea, occupied by Russian forces, fewer people are being counted and fewer reports are being received from war-weary Ukrainians.
“Dolphins are the sentinels of the ocean’s ecology because they are at the top of the food chain,” Slobodnik said. The impact of “thousands” of bombs, oil leaks and sunken ships can only be guessed at. “All we can say is that because of this war, the Black Sea has reached a tipping point and is probably even beyond it.”
Dolphins are at the top of the food chain and are an indicator of the health of the Black Sea. Photo: Large Valley/Alamy
Almost three years have passed since the Kakhovka dam accident in June 2023, when Russian forces were believed to be behind the vandalism of construction on the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine. The dam burst killed dozens of people, flooded fields and homes in an area of about 230 square miles (600 square kilometers), sent serious pollutants and heavy metals into the Black Sea along the Dnipro River, and deposited toxic waste and rotting animal carcasses in river delta sediments.
double quotes I have spent most of my life watching life return to the Black Sea. And now this war Dr. Yaroslav Slobodnik
According to Slobodnik, it was a “toxic punch in the face of the Black Sea.”
Before Russia’s invasion in February 2022, Ukraine was working towards meeting EU environmental standards in its waters, even declaring in 2020 that the Black Sea was “alive” again from tributaries that had been pumped with toxic industrial chemicals and pesticides for years. Tens of thousands of euros have been spent to bring the purity of the water, and therefore the biodiversity, up to EU standards.
“It’s a very unique ecosystem. I’ve spent most of my life watching life return to the Black Sea, pollution reduced, the Danube improving, the Black Sea improving. It’s my ocean, and now this war is happening,” Slobodnik says. “We think the ecosystem has been fundamentally changed and damaged. We can see some evidence in satellite images. Recently we were able to see these invasive plants, these ugly bubbly red species.”
On June 10, 2023, houses were flooded in Kherson after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine. Photo: Associated Press
Satellite images also show dozens of Russian ships anchored off the Russian-occupied east coast and Crimea. “We think there are a lot of Russian shadow fleets moving in and out of there,” said Viktor Komolin, a marine scientist at the Ukrainian Marine Ecological Science Center (UkrSCES). We only monitor multiple pollutants that are highly aggressive and highly toxic. ”
Comorin has participated in dozens of scientific expeditions in the Black Sea and worries that the war is causing irreversible damage. “Its very unique ecosystem is already extremely vulnerable to climate change and organic pollution because 82% of its volume is hydrogen sulfide and only bacteria thrive. Only the top layer at the surface of the water is oxygenated water.”
Comorin is keen to uncover the reality of the war’s impact on the seas, but says the reality is that even if it were seaworthy, deploying the damaged research vessel Boris Alexander would be risky. “We already know there are a lot of dangerous objects out there, such as rockets, landmines, drones and other explosives,” he says.
Scientists are taking samples from the stomachs of dead dolphins to build a database of environmental DNA. Photo: Global Images Ukraine/Getty Images
Meanwhile, scientists watch, worry, and wait. The Comorin Research Institute in Odesa continues to build its own database of environmental DNA taken from the stomachs of dolphin carcasses as much as possible, and samples oil and pollutants that occur along the coastline. He is hopeful that the dolphin population may be able to recover after the war.
“Of course, only half of the staff remain here. The men have gone to the army and the female staff with children have gone overseas. I believe they will come back after the war.”
