Dead dolphins, naval mines: Russia-Ukraine war destroys the Black Sea

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. It failed – but the ongoing hostilities have been killing “hundreds times more” bottlenose and short-beaked dolphins and harbour porpoises, according to Ivan Rusev, head researcher at the Tuzly Lagoons national park in southern Ukraine.