Russia’s war in Ukraine is devastating Black Sea marine life, killing more than 120,000 dolphins and causing ecological damage.

Kyiv, Ukraine – Fishers and poachers along the Black Sea coast often find suffocated dolphins entangled in their nets,

They release them by cutting off their fins and dropping them in the sea. Their bodies, with net marks on their skin, are often washed ashore.

Fishing and poaching in littoral Black Sea nations plummeted because of Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion, as Moscow strove to occupy all of Ukraine’s Black Sea coast.

It failed – but the ongoing hostilities have been killing “hundreds times more” bottlenose and short-beaked dolphins and harbour porpoises, according to Ivan Rusev, head researcher at the Tuzly Lagoons national park in southern Ukraine.

In 2022 alone, some 50,000 dolphins died this way, and by 2026, the number exceeded 120,000, or one in four cetaceans in the Black Sea, Rusev told Al Jazeera.

Dolphins are apex predators, and their decimation further ruins the Black Sea’s ecosystem already affected by chemicals from munitions, spills of oil, fuel and vegetable oils from dozens of sunk or damaged warships, tankers and freighters.

Many dead dolphins still have their fins, but look starved.

Explosions, launches of cruise missiles from warships, and military sonar systems confuse them, deafening their primary survival tool, echolocation, and making them unable to navigate, communicate and hunt.

“If a dolphin can’t fish, it loses weight fast,” said Rusev, whose park covers 280 square kilometres (108 square miles) of salty lagoons that serve as a stopover and breeding site for migratory birds.

Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/31/dead-dolphins-naval-mines-russia-ukraine-war-destroys-the-black-sea?traffic_source=rss