Black Sea: Hope for Ecosystem Near Death

Around the corner from Odessa’s grand portside staircase, twin pipes gush a greenish-brown soup of untreated sewage into the harbor. Nearby beaches are almost permanently closed to swimming and fishing.

A few miles away, a once-esteemed marine research station makes a little money using its seven vessels to ferry goods across the Black Sea to Istanbul, Turkey. It’s the only way to raise funds, which once poured in from Soviet science academies.

And a half-day’s sail away, on the border with Romania, a patch of hope: dense flocks of birds and unspoiled spawning grounds for fish in the delta of the mighty Danube River.

These are three pictures of the Black Sea--that great body of water of Greek legend, Cold War strategizing and modern-day crisis. Larger than Italy, it sits strategically at the joining of Europe and Asia and is crucial to livelihoods in Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania and Turkey. Its tributaries bring water from as far away as Switzerland.

The first picture is of the uncontrolled dumping--carried by sewage pipes and feeder rivers-- choking the sea’s thin remaining layer of life.

Another is the economic decline of the former Soviet bloc states, which has crippled scientific research but also idled some pollution-spewing industries.

The third, and least noticed, is reflected in the smile of a delta fisherman displaying his catch of pike, free of lesions or disease.

The Black Sea--like its landlocked cousins the Aral and Caspian to the east--is in steep decline. But its plight has drawn considerably more attention and resources: The wealthy European Union is expanding toward its shores, and conservationists are finding broad encouragement to try to save what Russia’s Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II called “the pearl of the planet.”

“The Black Sea is lethally wounded,” warns Romania’s president, Emil Constantinescu. “The consequences of letting it die are beyond imagination.”

*

Nature stacked the cards against the Black Sea.

Five major rivers, including the Danube from the heart of Europe and the Dnieper from west-central Russia, pour into the sea. Along with life-giving nutrients, the waterways also have carried in millions of tons of organic debris: tree limbs, plants, fish carcasses.

In seas with deep currents and cleansing circulation, such matter decays and is flushed away.

But the Black Sea is essentially a giant lake. Its only outlet is the narrow Bosporus in Turkey. The organic matter floats gently to the sea floor. Decomposition over the millennia has used up oxygen in the deep water, and the lack of deep currents means oxygen-rich water on the surface is not circulated into the depths.

Now about 90 of the sea is completely lifeless. The sea is up to 6,600 feet deep, but below about 660 feet lies the world’s largest “dead zone”--a vast reservoir of hydrogen sulfide that smells of rotten eggs when it bubbles to the surface.

And the narrow, oxygenated cap of life has begun to shrink even more in recent decades.

Huge algae blooms that strangle sea life have been fed by fertilizer runoff from farms in the Black Sea drainage basin, which covers more than one-third of Europe from near Moscow to the Swiss Alps.

Pollution in the Bosporus has disrupted fish migration patterns that helped replenish species.

Foreign tankers, meanwhile, have brought in alien sea creatures --stowaways in ballast water. One newcomer--the jellyfish-like Mnemiopsis leidyi--is an “eating machine” that devours staggering amounts of the tiny plankton needed by young fish.

Fishermen noticed their falling catches. But that only made them press harder with sonar and bigger nets--particularly the Turkish fleet--in a calamitous race for what fish were left.

Some of the most prized fish-- mackerel, turbot, bonito--have dipped to record low levels. Hatcheries now preserve the Black Sea sturgeon, once so common that local lore says “caviar was for the poor.” Dolphins are seen much less frequently.

The total Black Sea catch peaked at 850,000 tons in 1985, then plummeted to 300,000 tons over the next five years. A slow recovery is underway. The catch in 1995 was more than 500,000 tons, but of less valuable fish such as anchovy and sprat, whose populations fluctuate but have managed to hang on.

Part of the turnaround can be traced all the way to the Kremlin. The dismantling of the Soviet Union thrust its former republics and satellite states into the harsh world marketplace. Once-subsidized factories shut down and stopped dumping effluent into the Black Sea. Fishermen abandoned their boats, reacting to a crippled domestic market and little opportunity to export.

Environmentalists say the sea was given a needed breather.

“This is a window of opportunity,” said Laurence Mee, coordinator of the Black Sea Environmental Program, which is financed by the World Bank and other institutions.

“The economies will have to pick up some day. What we hope is that they will be restructured in a more environmentally conscious way and that people will realize that the clock is ticking on the fate of the Black Sea.”

*

“A razor’s edge.”

The spiritual leader of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, says this is the thin line on which the Black Sea rests. It could slip away so easily.

“The people see change,” he said. “Fish are disappearing, crystalline waters become choked with green algae, the beaches and harbors are badly polluted, and its beauty is soiled by the hand of man.”

Bartholomew, seeking to instill an environmental ethic in his faith, strongly believes an alliance between scientists and religious leaders could create a potent ecological force. The Black Sea, cradled in the north by Orthodox nations, may be the first test of his endeavor.

In September, more than 300 researchers, professors and activists joined a trip around the Black Sea led by the patriarch.

“We are both in the business of perfection,” said one of the participants, Jane Lubchenco, a marine biologist at Oregon State University. “Science seeks the perfect truth. Religion seeks a perfect world. We were made for each other.”

In Batumi, Georgia, a quaint but decaying port on the eastern tip of the Black Sea, only a few people still try to eke out a living from fishing.

Georgia’s minister of the environment, Nino Chkhobadze, laments the lost connection in a place rich with maritime tradition and lore. Many mythologists believe Batumi to be the spot where Jason and the Argonauts landed in their search for the golden fleece. Mt. Ararat, where the Bible says Noah’s Ark came to rest, lies just to the south in Turkey.

“Our beaches are lined with garbage,” Chkhobadze said. “You can’t fish anymore because there are no fish. You can’t do any mussel collecting because there are no mussels. . . . We have to save ourselves.”

*

The beaches around Odessa were open for only about one week this summer. Sewage runoff makes the water a health-threatening broth blamed for outbreaks of cholera and hepatitis.

Odessa represents a troubling intersection of a neglectful past and a cash-strapped future. Ukraine does not have the money to correct what the Soviets left them: no sewage treatment plants, polluting factories, inadequate port facilities to handle ships’ waste.

Odessa is one of the main “environmental hot spots” of the Black Sea, said Yuvenaly Zaitsev, chief scientist of the Odessa branch of the Institute of Biology of Southern Seas.

Olga Maiboroda, an advisor to the Black Sea Environmental Program, said: “The Black Sea speaks to us in a different language--a nonhuman language, its cloudy water, fishes with disease, the crabs that are gone. We don’t have a choice. We have to do something.”

*

The fisherman’s line went taut. From a small canoe on the Danube River delta, he hauled in a large pike--the fifth that morning.

The delta is the paradox of the Black Sea.

It’s the most impressive environmental success story in the region. But through its waters flow some of the most damaging elements for the sea.

The Danube carries more than 70% of the solids and runoff into the Black Sea. The problem is both the type of material carried and its staggering volume: more than 50,000 tons of oil each year; heavy metals like mercury and zinc; huge amounts of phosphorus and nitrates from fertilizers used on farms.

The nutrients, which have risen tenfold since 1960, feed an ecological chain reaction. Giant algae beds flourish, disrupting the natural food chain and choking out habitats for fish.

Eastern European farmers have generally abandoned use of costly chemical fertilizers since the end of state agriculture subsidies. Two prosperous Danube nations, Germany and Austria, are now responsible for the bulk of the flow.

In the delta, the rebound has been remarkable since Romania and Ukraine established joint marine sanctuaries in 1990.

Land reclaimed for farming by Communist governments has been reflooded. Natural vegetation such as willows and reed beds has returned, creating important habitats for fish and about 322 species of native or migratory birds. Several rare species, including white and Dalmatian pelicans and pygmy cormorant, have been brought back from near extinction in the delta.

The United Nations is considering designating the delta a world heritage site.

“The Black Sea is an example of almost all the things that could go wrong in a marine environment,” said Zaitsev, the Odessa marine scientist. “But it’s not dead yet. Let’s say it’s kind of like on death row.”