Dolphins in the Black Sea are dying en masse – the Russian warships are to blame

The Russian invasion of Ukraine not only entails a lot of human suffering, but also animals. This is also the case in the Black Sea region, where, according to local wildlife and animal protection groups, thousands of dead dolphins have washed up on the Ukrainian coast since the start of the war.

In total, about 250,000 dolphins lived in the Black Sea before the war started. And as early as June, conservation groups warned of a mass extinction due to the Russian invasion. The use of sonar technology and the thunder of gunfire from the warships would destroy the animals’ “sensitive navigation system” underwater, Ukraine’s animal protection organization “UAnimals” wrote on Facebook. The marine mammals emit high-frequency sounds, the echoes of which give them information about objects in the surrounding underwater world.

Many dolphins are at home in the zone that has been covered by Russian naval navigation equipment since the beginning of the war – which has a detrimental effect on the echolocation organs of the animals and also causes them acoustic injuries.

Warships and submarines produce powerful sounds both above and below water. Among other things, guided missiles are repeatedly fired at the Ukrainian mainland by Russian warships of the Black Sea Fleet.

The increasing orientation problems and the enormously increased noise level make the animals “blind” in their orientation and lead, among other things, to the dolphins encountering sea mines. Also, because of the confusion, they can no longer catch enough fish and are therefore more susceptible to infectious diseases. As a result, more dolphins would die, wrote Ivan Ruzev, director of the Tusli Lagoon National Park near the Ukrainian port city of Odessa on the Black Sea.

Numbers probably many times higher

At least 5,000 animals have already died in Ukrainian waters and washed up, Ruzev told Ukrainska Pravda newspaper. The number of dead dolphins is actually much higher, the biologist said recently: “Let’s just remember that the sea only wash up about five percent of all dead animals. The other 95 percent just sink to the bottom of the sea — and we can’t register them.”

These deceased dolphins cannot be counted from the shore. “Therefore, we estimate that up to 50,000 whales have already died in the war against Ukraine, which is absolutely terrible for the marine ecosystem,” Rusev wrote. According to him, there are also reports of dead animals from Bulgaria and Romania – including countries on the Black Sea. In recent years, however, fishing and poaching have been the biggest threats to dolphins.