2023-08-20 04:00:00
(Odessa) The victim was found along a beach near the port city of Odessa in southern Ukraine in early summer. Cause of death: unknown.
Posted at 12:00 a.m.
Marc Santora
The New York Times
As a light rain falls on the ground where the necropsy is to take place, representatives of law enforcement, a representative of the local prosecutor’s office and civilian witnesses are gathered to observe the scene.
On the beach lies a harbor porpoise. Their bodies wash up by the dozens on the shores of the Black Sea.
” The Dolphins [et les marsouins] are not just cute creatures,” says Pawel Goldine, 44, a doctor of zoology specializing in marine mammal populations at the Ukrainian Scientific Center for Marine Ecology, before the necropsy. “These are keystone species for the marine ecosystem. If the dolphins are in bad shape, the whole ecosystem will be in bad shape. »
However, the dolphins of the Black Sea are in difficulty.
Ukrainian authorities say their plight bears witness to the savage impact of Russia’s war on marine life and the environment more generally, something they want to document for legal action.
Four specific acts – genocide, crimes against humanity, aggression and war crimes – are recognized as international crimes. Ukraine would like to add a fifth – ecocide – and has begun to build its case against Russia. The porpoise necropsy is part of this approach.
“We are in the process of developing a prosecution strategy for environmental war crimes and ecocide,” explains Maksim Popov, adviser to the General Prosecutor of Ukraine in charge of environmental issues. “This strategy is not yet established. »
The sea, war zone
Although people often use the terms dolphins and porpoises interchangeably, they are separate creatures. Both are threatened with extinction.
In a sign of the importance Ukraine attaches to this issue, President Volodymyr Zelensky has included “immediate protection of the environment” in the ten-point peace plan that Ukraine hopes to use as the basis for negotiations aimed at end the war.
Ruslan Strelets, Ukrainian Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources, said in an interview that environmental investigators have collected data on more than 900 cases of dead dolphins. This figure includes dolphins found on the coasts of Ukraine, as well as in Turkey and Bulgaria, which also border the Black Sea.
In one week in July, 10 dolphins were found and are being investigated to determine how they died.
This is a new challenge in wartime. We must not lose any information on crimes against the environment.
Ruslan Strelets, Ukrainian Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources
The destruction of the Kakhovka dam, which dumped billions and billions of liters of polluted water into the Dnieper and the Black Sea, was the most serious blow to the environment in an already disastrous war on the ecological plan. But already, dolphins were dying at an alarming rate.
Russian warships threatening the southern coast of Ukraine in the Black Sea constantly use acoustic sonar signals which scientists say can interfere with the sense of orientation of dolphins, which use their own natural sonar to l echolocation.
Explosions, rocket fire and low-flying Russian fighter jets only add to the cacophony that traumatizes the dolphins, says Goldine.
However, he points out that it is much too early to establish a direct link between the disappearance of the dolphins and a specific cause.
The sea mines that litter the coastal waters are new deadly obstacles. Pollutants from explosives and fuel leaks, as well as an assortment of war-related waste, have degraded large swaths of the Black Sea Biosphere Reserve, Ukraine’s largest protected area, which is listed “wetland of international importance”. The environmental assessment of the consequences of the dam failure is still the subject of in-depth studies.
PHOTO BRENDAN HOFFMAN, THE NEW YORK TIMES
Tanker partially submerged after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in Kherson last June
According to Pawel Goldine, the floodwaters contained heavy metals, pesticides and nutrients – nitrogen and phosphorus in particular – which had accumulated in the sediments behind the dam. These nutrients have triggered a massive bloom of algae, which can become toxic.
Deep analyze
A major survey of the Black Sea cetacean population in 2019 found that there were around 200,000 harbor porpoises, 120,000 common dolphins and 20,000 to 40,000 bottlenose dolphins, says Pawel Goldine.
While some conservationists have speculated that just in the first year of the war more than 50,000 Black Sea dolphins may have perished, scientists involved in forensic examinations are more cautious.
Pawel Goldine says it is not yet possible to estimate the number of dolphins killed by the war, and that Ukraine is working with international partners to better understand what is happening.
PHOTO LAURA BOUSHNAK, THE NEW YORK TIMES
Ukraine is working with universities in Italy and Germany to better understand the cause of death of marine mammals on its territory.
Ukraine had to create new methodologies to document environmental damage, says Minister Rouslan Strelets. The Black Sea is a combat zone, large parts of the Ukrainian coastline are occupied by the Russians and many areas are too dangerous to visit.
But it’s one thing to document a dead dolphin washed up on shore. It is much more complicated to understand why the animal died.
“Diagnosis is the result of all stages of research,” says Goldine.
After each necropsy, Ukraine sends samples to experts from the University of Padua in Italy and the University of Hannover in Germany for further analysis.
This work will take time, according to Pawel Goldine. And it was only after the war, when a large-scale study of marine life in the Black Sea could be carried out, that the true toll would be known.
Nonetheless, each dolphin death they document and investigate offers important clues.
The porpoise dissected this summer had died a few weeks earlier, a few days after the destruction of the dam. With Ukraine’s resources limited, he had to be frozen until authorities could perform a necropsy in accordance with the protocols of a scientific and criminal investigation.
“It’s a little beast,” says Pawel Goldine as his team spreads the porpoise on a table to thaw it. A powerful odor emanates from it, even in the open air, while the creature is being cut.
During the necropsy, the biologist observes with astonishment that the porpoise’s stomach is full and that it has recently eaten at least five species of fish.
“Such a quantity of food shows that he was ready to live,” says Mr. Goldine. “It’s intriguing because it makes his death even more mysterious. »
This article was originally published in the New York Times.
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