Dead dolphins, naval mines: Russia-Ukraine war destroys the Black Sea
Conflict devastates Black Sea marine life, killing more than 120,000 dolphins and causing ecological damage.
Kyiv, Ukraine – Fishers and poachers along the Black Sea coast often find suffocated dolphins entangled in their nets,
They release them by cutting off their fins and dropping them in the sea. Their bodies, with net marks on their skin, are often washed ashore.
Fishing and poaching in littoral Black Sea nations plummeted because of Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion, as Moscow strove to occupy all of Ukraine’s Black Sea coast.
“Most of the stranded dead cetaceans are usually in an advanced state of decomposition, making detection of net marks and other marks almost impossible,” Dimitar Popov of Green Balkans, Bulgaria’s oldest nature conservation group, told Al Jazeera.