15,000 birds died, 20,000 poisoned in Russian oil slick*

MOSCOW, Nov 22 (AFP) Nov 22, 2007

A major oil spill off the southern coast of Russia killed over 15,000
birds and poisoned over 20,000, the state agricultural and natural
resources monitoring agency said Wednesday.

"By now we have registered documented deaths of 12,839 bald coots, 811
great crested grebes, 171 ducks, 877 cormorants, two swans and one
pheasant," the agency said in a statement.

"It is impossible to determine the exact number of perished birds due to
the fact that the dead birds were swept to the beach and covered by some
50-centimeter layer of a shell-and-oil mixture," the statement added.

"Oil poisoning was registered in now surviving 19,500 bald coots, 21
grebes, some 350 ducks, and 755 cormorants, and the possibility that
they may die is very high," the agency warned.

Some 2,000 tonnes of fuel oil seeped into environmentally sensitive
waters of the Kerch Strait in the northeastern corner of the Black Sea,
after a fierce storm on Sunday wrecked five ships including an oil tanker.

The level of oil spilled in the Kerch Strait, some 1,200 kilometres (750
miles) south of Moscow, is 50 times the limit allowed for fishing,
environmental monitoring agency Rosgidromet said in a statement on
Wednesday.