The surfers of Kamchatka Peninsula of Russia recently complained of burning eyes, fever, throat ache and fear of losing sight. In hours after these complaints, millions of sea animals began to die in large numbers. Their bodies started to litter the beach in the region. These include seals, octopuses, sea urchins, crabs, stars and fish.
Highlights
A special envoy under Russian President Vadimir Putin was deployed for an immediate inquiry. The team found that the levels of phenols and oil compounds in the sea had increased that led to the ecological catastrophe. Also, there are fears that rocket fuel stored in the military testing grounds may have leaked.
The pollution came to light after water colour began to change in the region.
The region is a popular destination for adventure tourism for its abundance of wildlife and live volcanoes. The Kamchatka is a UNESCO World Heritage site.
UNESCO World Heritage Site
The criteria to select a World Heritage Site is as follows
- The site should contain most important natural habitat of biological diversity. It contains threatened species of Universal value in the point of conservation.
- It should be an outstanding example of ongoing biological and ecological processes. It should bring out the evolution and development of freshwater and Terrestrial coastal and marine ecosystems and communities of animals and plants.
- The site should be of outstanding examples to represent the history of the earth. It should have ongoing logical processes that develop landforms, geomorphic and physiographic features.
- It should contain natural phenomenon of a static importance and natural beauty.
- This site should be associated with events that project Universal significance.
- It should be an example of traditional land use, sea use human settlement for human interaction with environment and has become vulnerable due to the impacts of Irreversible changes.
- It should be an outstanding example of architectural landscape that illustrates human history in significant stages.
- It should hold testimonies of Cultural Tradition
- It should exhibit developments in monumental Arts town planning and landscape design.
- It should be a Masterpiece of human creativeness.