Holidays at Bulgaria resorts at danger: large oil spill in Black Sea occurred
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13:09, — society
Holidays in Bulgaria are seriously endangered by an oil spill in the Black Sea, the beaches are heavily polluted.
The Charter’97 press-center has been informed about that by Belarusian citizens who are having rest at Bulgaria’s shore now. As informed by mass media, the source of the spill was oil transportation tankers.
As informed by the website “Russia’s Oil” , the spills were first noticed at about 3pm, Moscow time, on May 28 by experts of the project www.BlackSea-online.com. They received satellite photos of the Black Sea area. The analysis of the pictures showed that several large spills took place in the Black Sea. Their total territory was about several dozens square kilometers. Even now oil is conveyed over the sea surface and endangers the ecological community of the sea area.
The space photos seemed to point towards several oil tankers as the source of the spill. No measures to remove oil spill are taken. Considering air streams a conclusion can be made that oil is drifting towards Bulgaria and Ukraine’s shore.
The Charter’97 has addressed Bulgarian mass media. Bulgarian Black Sea coast was in no threat of being hit by oil spills, Maritime Administration (MA) was quoted as saying by Darik Radio on May 30 2008. On May 29 Russian Black Sea online space monitoring system said that an oil spill had been spotted in the Black Sea just 70km from Bulgaria's third largest city of Varna. According to blacksea-online.com, there were several oil spills the size of Varna bay, which is roughly 35 sq km. The space photos seemed to point towards several oil tankers as the source of the spill, but neither their names, nor their nationality, were disclosed.
Based on the news MA conducted its own analyses of the possible ways the situation could develop and concluded that Bulgaria’s shores were in no danger.
MA has sent letters to all sea ports in the region asking them to check all ships for possible oil spills.
However, as informed by Belarusian tourists, water is seriously contaminated with oil at the Southern shore of Bulgaria (varna is situated in the North of the country). “The situation doesn’t have a catastrophic character yet. People continue to swim, but spots of oil stay on skin and clothes. They are removed by varnish remover… For some reason administration of resort towns does not clean beaches actively,” tourists inform.
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