Description
Concentrated, his eyes riveted in the distance, Ivan Roussev walks along a stretch of Black Sea beach, looking for a stranded form that seems abnormal to him. Suddenly, he hurries as he spots a dolphin carcass: he has found dozens washed up on the shore since the start of the war in Ukraine. Roussev, 63, is the scientific director of the Tuzly Estuaries National Nature Park, 280 km2 of protected coast in Bessarabia, an isolated historical region in the south-west of the Ukraine. "Last year along the whole length of the sea shore of our national park -- which is 44 kilometres long -- we had only three dolphins wash up. Now, along just the five kilometres where we are allowed to operate since the war broke out, we have found 35 dolphins already," he laments. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES