Introduction to the Black Sea

The Black Sea has a bellyache

Contrary to what you might expect, developments in the Black Sea region do not only influence the Black Sea countries. The Black Sea region is important for the entire world, so what happens there affects the entire world.

The Black Sea has a bellyache. That is why the six Black Sea countries (Turkey, Georgia, the Russian Federation, Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine) signed the Black Sea Strategic Action Plan (BSAP) on October 31, 1996.

The 31st of October is now International Black Sea Day. On International Black Sea Day, beach clean-ups and other events take place in the countries around the Black Sea, organised by the local NGOs (non-government organisations).

What happens in the Black Sea region affects you too, wherever you live, whether you like caviar, dolphins, neither or both.

So, what is this 'bellyache', you ask? And where is it located anyway, this Black Sea?

Dr. Alexander Vershinin of the P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology provided most of the beautiful images shown on these pages. He received a special discretionary prize as part of the 2005 EMBO Award for Communication in the Life Sciences. For more information, see http://www.embo.org/about_embo/press/special_award05.html.

I am sorry but you are not allowed to copy or use any pictures from this site without prior written permission. They are not mine and most of them are not my boss's either.

Dr. Vershinin, together with Katya Sivkova of Izhevsk State University, also provided a Russian version of this site, when it was still hosted at savetheblacksea.org.

As I don't speak Russian - and neither does my boss - I was not able to update the Russian pages and decided not to keep them. Instead, I am referring all Russian readers to the Russian version of Dr. Vershinin's site.

This is a SmarterScience web site.

© SmarterScience
Most recent update: February 1, 2008