On December 15, 2024 tankers Volgoneft-212 and Volgoneft-239 crashed in the Kerch Strait. As a result of this accident, a large-scale environmental disaster occurred – about 2,400 tons of fuel oil ended up in the sea and on the shore. A disaster of this level has already been significantly affecting the nature of the water area, and even leading experts predict the future consequences of the accident with great caution.
Since the very first day, while the public is accepting the fact of the disaster with apprehension, thousands of concerned people from all over the country have been coming to the Black Sea coast. Every day, hundreds of volunteers clean up fuel oil washed ashore and rescue birds contaminated with oil products. Kuban State University could not stay away from disaster – staff and students actively help the nature of their native land, doing active physical and scientific work.
On December 20, the first group of students and staff from the main building of KubSU arrived to eliminate the consequences of the disaster.
– Since then the volunteers have organized six liquidation trips. During this time, more than 360 people took part in the work, many of them repeatedly, – Dayana Sabitova, director of the KubSU Volunteer Center, notes.
– …We have collected a large amount of contaminated substrate, and the volunteers did a great job, given the relatively short time they spent there and, of course, not the most comfortable conditions. …Moreover, biological methods of decontamination of various materials, primarily soils, from oil products were formerly developed at KubSU. I am sure that these methods will become an important experience for production facilities that will later process contaminated sand. We have made a great contribution to eliminate the consequences of the accident, as many other volunteers, – Roman Tenyakov shares his impressions. While hundreds of volunteers literally are physically restraining the further spread of oil products along the coast, this gives scientists the opportunity to examine all the features of what happened in detail and develop methods for high-quality soil and water decontamination. Read about the work performed by KubSU scientists in the following material (read more https://www.kubsu.ru/ru/node/43579).
