ABSTRACT:

The results of ecological surveys performed in the summer of 2003 in the Aniva Bay and on the shelf of north-eastern Sakhalin are presented. On the basis of an extensive experimental material and its statistical processing the conclusion about the effect of the sea petroleum-gas complex on an environment has been made.

INTRODUCTION

In the north-eastern shelf of Sakhalin Iceland the project «Sakhalin –2» aimed at exploring the petroleum field has been launched. In this connection the study of ecological state of water areas involved in the production and transportation of petroleum is an extremely urgent task because sea oil and gas complex in considered one of the most ecologically dangerous types of activity. The performance of nature protecting surveys is very significant because the Okhotsk Sea is still one of the seas rich in the purest marine bioresources in the world, and oil and gas complex different structures planned to be erected, the routes of pipelines and the prospective routes for tankers movement which are planned to be laid down not far from the zones of active fishing and of spawning of valuable kinds of fish ⎯ all these factors may do much harm to the Okhotsk Sea. For the quantitative assessment of the effect of different types of economic activities on the sea environment and hydrobiontes and in order to determine the degree of permissible economic activities and to organize monitoring research, it is necessary to have all data on the state of water areas. In the 1990-es the specialists of different research organizations and institutes carried out complex ecological surveys of some objects of oil and gas complex during which the expeditions for the purpose of carrying out oceanographic, hydrobiological and geochemical surveys in the northeastern shelf of Sakhalin were organized.

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