In brief
A container ship hit by three maritime drones off Bulgaria’s coast sank while all 18 crew members were rescued. Although preliminary inspections suggest no major environmental damage from the ship’s fuel cargo, Bulgarian authorities will carry out extensive seawater sampling to verify no pollution has spread.
The container vessel CONTSHIP JET was struck by three maritime drones approximately 21 nautical miles southeast of Shabla, east of Cape Kaliakra, on Wednesday night. The impact caused a catastrophic breach that led the ship to sink around midnight.
All 18 crew members – 14 Filipinos and 4 Ukrainians – were rescued by Bulgarian authorities and flown to Varna. The ship was carrying 421 containers, including light fuel oil in 20 of its tanks and other hazardous cargo.
Teams from the Maritime Administration Executive Agency inspected the sunken vessel and judged that the gas oil cargo would evaporate quickly and was unlikely to reach the Bulgarian coast. The agency said no significant adverse effects on the marine environment were expected at this stage.
Despite the assessment, the Defence Ministry collected seawater samples from two sites in Bulgarian territorial waters and found no visible pollution signs.
The Environment and Water Ministry announced that on Thursday teams from the Black Sea Basin Directorate and the Executive Environment Agency will collect samples at five coastal locations – Durankulak, Shabla, Cape Kaliakra, Byala and Sozopol – for petroleum, polychlorinated biphenyls, metals and other physicochemical indicators.
Additional sampling will be conducted in the area around the ship’s final position, with results to be analysed at the Executive Environment Agency’s regional laboratories in Varna and Burgas. The goal is to determine whether pollution is present and whether seawater quality has changed beyond visual inspection.
The incident marks the fifth drone attack in Bulgaria’s exclusive economic zone since early October, and monitoring of the Black Sea environment will continue until the sampling is complete and the Ministry releases the findings.
