Volunteers cleaned "Yailata“ reserve after the "Vera Su“ ship incident

On November 5, volunteers cleaned up the „Yailata“ archaelogical reserve, where the cargo ship “Vera Su” remained stuck near Bulgaria's Black Sea coast for over a month.

The initiative for the cleaning was by the "Black Sea“ Basin Directorate – this way they marked the World Black Sea Day.

The volunteers went around the terrain of “Yailata” in search of waste, but found only cigarrette fag ends, left by the rescuers,who took psrt in the salvage operation. Only one rope was found from the ship itself, which hadd been used to tie the ship to one of the rocks, so it could be stabilised while waiting to be rescued.

The volunteers were equipped with gloves and garbage bags. They looked for rubbish even in the most diffficult to accees places of the reserve.

As it turned out, the sea has returned some of the waste, that people had thrown in it throughout the years. That is why some of the bags were filled with rubbish from past years.

The caretaker Deputy Minister of Environment and Water, Petar Dimitrov, also took part in the cleanup intiattive. He said that the quality of sea water in the area where ship “Vera Su” got stuck, is monitored every Monday.

The data shows a sharp decrease in the concentration of nitrogen ammonia, in comparison to the peak levels during the ship’s unloading. The levels of nitrogen ammonia is less than 0.12, which means the quality of the sea water is back to the levels from before the incident,” Dimitrov said.

The participants in the cleanup of “Yailata” were awarded caps and T-shirts for the job well done.