Russian oil spill

Russian Marines joing the cleanup effort at Tuzla Spit.  (Sergei L. Loiko / Los Angeles Times)

Dead birds litter the beach at Tuzla Spit.  (Sergei L. Loiko / Los Angeles Times)

A bird covered with oil thrashes about on the beach of Tuzla Spit.  (Sergei L. Loiko / Los Angeles Times)

“It’s the disaster we’ve been dreading for many years,” said a British oceanographer. “It’s not a spill on a vast scale, like some of the massive oil spills, but the Black Sea is a totally enclosed basin. There’s no place for the oil to go, except on shore somewhere.”  (Sergei L. Loiko / Los Angeles Times)

An oil-covered bird lies dying in front of volunteers trying to clean up the shore at Port Kavkaz.  (Alexander Nemenov / AFP/Getty Images)

“They don’t understand what happened to them,” one man said of the dying birds. “They try to move their wings and they no longer can. They just sit there and look at us in agony and die.”  (Yuri Kochetkov / EPA)

A bird covered with oil sits among seaweed at Port Kavkaz.  (Yuri Kochetkov / EPA)

Russian Emergency Ministry service members collect oil-tainted seaweed at Port Kavkaz on the Black Sea shore.  (Yuri Kochetkov / EPA)