20 volunteers continue to work on cleaning the Kuban coast from fuel oil

A few volunteers continue to work near the site of the tanker wreck in the Temryuk district of Kuban, removing fuel oil from places inaccessible to equipment. The authorities have stopped volunteer activity on official beaches and report that the liquidation of the consequences of the fuel oil spill is complete.

"Caucasian Knot" wrote that from July 25 to August 19, the authorities did not record new fuel oil emissions on the coast of Anapa, although volunteers during this period stated that emissions were continuing. On August 4, the volunteer headquarters confirmed that local emissions of oil products are continuing on the beaches of Tamanand pollution is visiblealso on satellite images. The management of the sanatorium "Holidays in Anapa", despite the authorities' statements about the absence of oil product emissions, recommends that guests use shoe covers when visiting beaches.

The "Dolphins" volunteer headquarters, founded in January 2025, is the only volunteer association that remains on the coast of the Krasnodar Territory. It is based in the village of Volna with a population of about 2 thousand people, which is part of the Taman rural settlement. According to volunteers, fuel oil emissions continue along a 40-kilometer stretch of coastline in the Temryuk district; no more than 20 volunteers are currently engaged in eliminating emissions along this entire stretch.

As the founder and head of the Dolphins headquarters Alexander Kirpa said, his group continues to work in hard-to-reach places where the state equipment of the Ministry of Emergency Situations cannot get to. The headquarters' area of responsibility covers about 40 kilometers of the coast and the headquarters needs volunteers. The need for people will increase in September, when oil will be pumped out of sunken tankers - its remains will need to be collected in hard-to-reach places on the shore, the activist explained.

"We provide people with accommodation in a hotel and food. We are located 90 kilometers from Anapa towards the Kerch Strait, in the village of Volna. At present, there are 20 of us, all volunteers are not local - many work, have families, live in other cities. I am also not local, but I know Temryuk well. When the tragedy happened, I thought: "who if not me" and took up the organization of the headquarters. There were ten times more of us then. In total, from the beginning of volunteering until today, we have collected about 2.5 tons of fuel oil. But according to experts with whom we keep in touch, there are still 3.5 to 5 tons of fuel oil left in tankers at the bottom. We really are the only volunteers on the coast today. The authorities do not prohibit us from volunteering, on the contrary, they are happy to see us because we save resources and help to get to places where equipment cannot work. Where possible, the authorities send an excavator, but in hard-to-reach areas where no equipment can cope, we have to work manually. We are trying to buy an all-terrain vehicle with donations, which we use to transport bags of fuel oil and household waste from the shore, where we collect it, to places accessible to Emergencies Ministry equipment. We, volunteers, are even against the use of sieves and other mechanization: when fuel oil is sifted, it breaks into small particles, settles in the sand, and then water and wind carry away only the sand, and the oil layer itself remains. That's why we clean everything by hand," Kirpa told a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

According to the volunteer, tons of fuel oil remain at a depth of one meter under the sand. "There are especially many deposits under rocks, from where they have to be dug out by hand. During storms, new batches of fuel oil are thrown ashore," he explained.

The headquarters needs volunteers

Around the sunken parts of the tankers, one of which was cut up, in September it is planned to install cofferdams - fences designed to prevent a new spill of fuel oil during its pumping out of the tankers. As Kirpa explained, a cofferdam is a huge inflatable or metal "container" that frames a tanker or its underwater compartment like a second hull, creating a sealed space separated from the rest of the water. "The oil remains within the cofferdam and can then be pumped out. This technology prevents oil spills, but we were warned that we need to be prepared for the fact that it will be impossible to collect all the oil and some of the fuel oil will end up in the sea, and then there will be more work in those hard-to-reach places where we work. We are active on 20 km of the coast, but we monitor all 40 km. From September, we will need a large number of volunteers, since there will be more beaching than in winter. That is why we especially need volunteers in the near future,” says the head of the headquarters.

Volunteers wishing to join the Dolphins headquarters must register on the Dobro volunteer platform and contact the headquarters activists at the contacts indicated in Telegram two days before arriving in the village of Volna so that they can provide accommodation and resolve other organizational issues. To be accommodated in a hotel, you must send your passport details to the headquarters coordinator. The headquarters provides equipment and the necessary tools for manual excavation of fuel oil deposits in the sand, Kirpa added.

Headquarters coordinator Marina Kuznetsova said that she came to Kuban as a volunteer from St. Petersburg back in January and since then her connection with the headquarters has remained unbreakable, despite her place of residence. She clarified that the "Dolphins" exist only on donations - they provide housing, food and tools.

"We began working on the coast in January 2025. Everything is based on donations: accommodation for volunteers is free, food is organized by the headquarters. Volunteers come from all over Russia, local residents practically do not take part in volunteering. The most difficult ones are wild beaches without settlements, it is impossible to bring equipment there and that is where we work,” the headquarters coordinator told the “Caucasian Knot” correspondent. According to Kuznetsova, the 20 volunteers who are currently there are extremely few to clean 40 kilometers of coastline, especially since some of them are organizing food for the rest of the team.

According to Kuznetsova and Kirp, the “Network, Sieve, Shovel” headquarters, which also did a lot to clean wild beaches from fuel oil, is no longer in touch. The “Caucasian Knot” correspondent was also unable to contact representatives of this association. The headquarters’ last Telegram channel message from August 9 reported that its volunteers were in a “period of travel and vacation.” “We have been working on the Bugayskaya Spit (the section from “girlo” towards Veselovka) since January 17. We set up Kalyaev nets, sift sand through our Molbert sieves, look for “pies” and dig them out. At the same time, we clean up the trash,” says the description of the “Nets, Sieve, Shovel” project.

Authorities chased volunteers away from official beaches

The authorities removed Kuban volunteers from the beaches back in the spring, says the head of the TOS “Mayak” in AnapaElena Leitan, who has been at the head of the volunteer movement since the environmental disaster. “Right now, only equipment is working on the beaches. According to my information, there are six units of equipment accredited by Rosprirodnadzor, and they are the ones doing the work. All the volunteers have been removed from the beaches. I personally go to the monitoring and can say: there is no one there except equipment and the Ministry of Emergency Situations. "As I said, there have been no volunteers on the beach since April," she told a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

The leader of the "Anapa Civil" movement Oleg Yantsen explained that the activists from Anapa did not cross paths with the volunteers from the "Dolphins" and "Nets, Sieve, Lopata" headquarters. "At the very peak of the problem, we worked directly in Anapa, and we had enough of our own groups - someone was engaged in birds, someone was cleaning the shore. There were various associations, "Green Patrol" and others. And "Nets, Sieve, Lopata" and "Dolphins" were always on the sidelines of cleaning up well-maintained beaches, it is possible that we did not manage to cross paths with them. Now the issue of fuel oil has become sluggish, and I personally have not met with representatives of these groups. We actually know nothing about them," he told a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

According to an activist from Anapa Ilya Gogolinsky, vacationers are already swimming on the well-equipped beaches. He is also not familiar with the representatives of the headquarters of "Network, Sieve, Lopata" and "Dolphins". "I can only say that there are more people on the streets of Anapa, there is almost no fuel oil on the official beaches. The cleanup is continuing with the help of the authorities, equipment is working, volunteers are not allowed. Nature cleans itself, throwing up on the shore what should not be in the water. The authorities clean up what the sea throws up on the shore themselves with their equipment," he explained.

Vityazevo volunteer Svetlana Ilyina claims that the situation on the wild beaches is different. In her opinion, the volunteers have done a lot, with their own efforts and at their own expense, but the problem remains. "The authorities are focused on the official beaches, while the wild ones remain dirty. There is still fuel oil in the sand and water, although in small quantities. There is no smell, but traces of pollution remain. Everyone was focused on saving the well-maintained beaches where people go on vacation, that's why there was such a stir. Anapa residents themselves went out to volunteer because for them it's the season and clean beaches mean money and a way to survive. As for the wild beaches and settlements with a small number of people, the authorities and volunteers did not pay attention to these beaches and many do not know about them. But the fuel oil spill occurred over a huge area and it needs to be cleaned up everywhere. I heard about "Dolphins" and "Nets, sieve, shovel". I think they are great because they took on cleaning up the most difficult areas, few people know about them and few of them probably sponsor them," Ilyina noted.

On December 15, 2024, two tankers carrying fuel oil sank in the Kerch Strait, which led to catastrophic environmental consequences. Details can be found in the "Caucasian Knot" reference "Fuel oil spill in the Kerch Strait". Materials on the consequences of the fuel oil spill have been collected by the "Caucasian Knot" on the thematic page "Eco-disaster in Kuban".

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