Rus­si­an ship wre­cked at Bjørnøya

The Rus­si­an free­zing ship Petro­za­vodsk ran aground near the sou­thern tip of Bear Island (Bjørnøya) on Mon­day, 11 May. The seas within one nau­ti­cal mile from the shore are pro­tec­ted and may not be ente­red with ves­sels lon­ger than 40 feet, as the cliffs are home to some of the lar­gest sea­bird colo­nies of the north Atlan­tic; the num­bers of bree­ding Brünich’s and Com­mon guil­l­emots amount to seve­ral hundred thou­sands and the bree­ding sea­son is just about to begin. The Petro­za­vodsk is lying on a reef just under the cliffs, which fre­quent­ly pro­du­ce rock­falls, making rem­oval of the wreck dan­ge­rous, if not impos­si­ble. The ves­sel, which was ope­ra­ting in the Barents sea tog­e­ther with Rus­si­an fishing ships, is dama­ged and seems to be loo­sing fuel, pro­ba­b­ly hea­vy oil, of which the­re seem to be about 53 tons on board.

Cap­tain and first offi­cer have been inter­view­ed in Lon­gye­ar­by­en by the Sys­sel­man­nen and will be on tri­al in Nor­way. Both had alco­hol in their blood upon arri­val in Lon­gye­ar­by­en soon after the acci­dent. The first mate was on watch at the time of the groun­ding, he was pro­ba­b­ly slee­ping (real­ly!).

Source: Kyst­ver­ket, Sys­sel­man­nen, Sval­bard­pos­ten

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