“The entire seabed was full of dead animals’ corpses”
This is what Kristina Rozenburg, a resident of Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, stated in horror on Instagram, as her neighbors observed the bodies of marine organisms scattered across the once-vibrant shores. The story of the decimation went viral and forced authorities to investigate the situation. The water became an unnatural grey-yellow and carried a pungent scent. Scientists there reported that 95% of life 10 to 15 meters below the surface, mainly benthos, or bottom-dwelling organisms, had been extinguished.
The cause of this aquatic bloodbath is still unclear. At first, Russian authorities such as Dmitry Kobylkin, the Russian Minister of Environment, downplayed the event by emphasizing on October 5 that no one was killed. Kamchatka’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology also claimed that there was nothing unusual about the appearance of the water. Both of these statements elicited major backlash on social media, prompting Kobylkin to later retract his response and say that aiding the environment of Russia should be of the utmost importance. Probes that were sent to the ocean reported abnormal quantities of phenol and petroleum, suggesting a possible oil leak. These levels of toxic substances are also the reason why the oceans were so deadly to marine organisms in the first place. Even locals who were surfing in the area experienced retina burns and nausea.
This is the second major environmental disaster in Russia within six months. In May, around 20,000 tons of fuel leaked into a river in Norilsk, prompting President Putin to declare a state of environmental emergency. Like with the mysterious toxic waters in Kamchatka, action was promoted through the social media uproar in response to the environmental catastrophe. Although these two incidents are incredibly tragic and severely damaged entire ecosystems, they show that the collective actions of the public have the power to prompt actions from the government and positively impact the environment.
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