Influence of the economic activities on coasts upon the coastal waters of the Black Sea

Abstract

The contemporary state of the ecosystem, coastal waters and coasts of the Black Sea can be assessed as critical. The main causes of unfavourable ecological changes of the sea, and especially its shelf waters, are the natural and anthropogenic changes in river runoff increase of biogenic compounds, organic matter, pollutants and toxic agents carried to the sea in river waters, pollution of the sea water basin with petroleum. This work is devoted to an assessment of the role of sea coasts in the change of its ecological state because up till now the majority of researchers considered the influence of quantitative and qualitative changes of the river runoff produced by the economic activities to be decisive. It is shown that even according to at present incomplete data the contribution of coasts of biogenic compounds to the coastal sea waters is comparable with the contribution of the runoff of large rivers; it is significant for oil hydrocarbons, and decisive with regard to surface acting agents (SAA), phenols and pesticides. In a number of areas the ecological state of the coastal waters is almost completely determined by the inflow of pollutants from coasts. The integral assessment of the quality of coastal sea waters on different areas of the sea proved that the quality of the water along the coasts of Georgia, Russia and the Ukraine varies from “moderately polluted” to “extremely dirty”.