The Black Sea Action Plans

These six countries are Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine.  The Action Plan is a result of a series of tragedies to the Black Sea that could have well been prevented before causing so much damage but as it is, we live in what James Martin referred to a ‘catastrophe-first’ patterned world.  The action plan was signed October 31, 1996.  By then the Black Sea had resorts with no usable beaches, there was no fish for the fishing towns.

The Black Sea, also considered to be the most isolated sea,  is an inland sea bordered by Europe, Anatolia and Caucasus which are Russia, the Republic of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.  It has an area of 436,400 km and a maximum depth of 7,238 ft.  In the ancient times the Black Sea sustained Greece, Byzantium, the Ottoman Empire and Imperial Russia as their prime fishing area.

The most significant process degrading the Black Sea was Eutrophication.   The Danube River cruises from the Black Forest of Germany through the countries of the Black Sea.  As it crosses these Eastern European countries, unprocessed sewage, oil, pesticides, and toxic industrial waste are being dumped into it but the magic of the Danube River is that it has a delta of 2 million acres that filters its waters before it reaches the Black Sea.  The problem began when President Nicolae Ceausescu, Romania’s dictator, ordered the delta be drained and developed because he thought it was a waste of Romania’s real estate as a result destroying the filter that protected life in the Black Sea.  Eutrophication is the massive over fertilization of the sea  by compounds of nitrogen and phosphorous which is largely a result of agricultural, domestic and industrial sources.  The Danube and its lesser rivers carried these excess fertilizers from a large number of farms into the Black Sea.  After the damage done to the delta these excess fertilizers were not being filtered anymore, were brought into the Black Sea and caused stunning algae bloom.  This over algae bloom in turn caused a population explosion in zooplankton to feed on the algae.  These creatures then began to consume most of the oxygen in the sea.  Let’s not forget the constant dumping of industrial pollutants into the Danube River which are now going straight to the Black Sea which eventually wiped out most of the fish.