What is the reason behind the green color of the Black Sea?
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The waters of the Black Sea near Odessa in southwestern Ukraine have turned green, prompting Russian scientists to investigate the reasons for this.
And he warns the Russian scientist Yuri Dzhiboyadze about the possibility of the spread of Chernobyl radiation in the Black Sea after the bombing of the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station by the hands of Ukrainian militants.
And according to Dr. Yuri Dzhibvadze, vice president of the Institute for Ecological Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said that toxic algae had spread in the water, but worst of all, fresh water flowing into the sea had affected the seabed, causing sediment to rise to its surface.
He said the Black Sea’s dramatic color change off the coast of Odessa was most likely caused by cyanobacteria, the microscopic blue-green algae that cause such environmental disasters over and over again.
This is very harmful, since you can’t drink water, because there are substances poisonous to humans and many hydrobionts, and this is what is called the “Color of Harmful Organisms” or, rather, the “Green Tide”.
For example, the Black Sea acquired the same shade in 2019. And, as scientists later proved, the cyanobacterium Nodularia spugimena was added to its water. These are poisonous creatures that do not like brackish water. It came with torrential rains that brought chemical-rich fertilizers from agricultural fields. And now, as the biologist explained, the same thing happened due to a well-known case when a large amount of fresh water from the collapsed Kakhovskaya station brought liquid waste and chemicals, that is, they created a favorable environment for such algae.
As Yuri Dzhboadze said, there is another very serious consequence of this accident. He noted that the Dnieper basin was heavily contaminated with radionuclides after the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. And he recalled that a much larger amount of nuclides descended into the Pripyat River (a relatively large tributary of the Dnieper) than what reached the earth’s land and atmosphere. Thus, the radiation spread throughout the Dnieper, and from there it got into the Black Sea and through it reached the Sea of Marmara. The scientist confirmed that radioactive materials are still at the bottom of the sea.
“First of all, it’s strontium and cesium, which are definitely coming up from the bottom with this flood,” he said.
Source: Alive