Russia says algae killed marine life off far eastern coast

Moscow, October 23

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Russia said on Friday the mass death of marine life off the coast of its far eastern Kamchatka region had been caused by toxic algae and was not a man-made disaster, the TASS news agency reported.

Environmental group Greenpeace warned of an ecological disaster earlier this month after surfers who got into waters off the Kamchatka peninsula fell ill and marine life washed up dead on the shore.

Greenpeace activists who travelled to the site said they had found yellowish foam on the ocean’s surface in several places. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) conservation group said the pollution appeared to be caused by a highly soluble substance.

On Friday, Natural Resources Minister Dmitry Kobylkin said the environmental damage had been caused by algae, but it was not clear why it had caused so much damage.

“What caused this to happen? It was the toxicity of the algae at this period of time,” Kobylkin was quoted as saying.

“But what the algae was responding to is probably the most interesting and important question because we would like to look at why there was a fall in oxygen in the water… I don’t have an answer to this yet,” he said.

Russia’s Investigative Committee, a law enforcement agency which opened a criminal case over the pollution, said in a statement that they were treating a bloom of naturally-occurring algae as the most likely cause.

It said in a statement that elevated levels of phenols – an oil product – in water were not critical and had been found in the Avacha Bay on Kamchatka’s southern coast since 1970. Reuters