Emergency services workers participating in the cleanup of the oil spill in Black Sea have identified seven new spots, a Russian official told the state-run TASS news agency today, as authorities scramble to mitigate the effects of the nearly month-long disaster.

About 2,400 metric tons of oil have spilled into the sea since December 15, when two aging tankers were hit by a storm in Kerch Strait.

President Vladimir Putin said yesterday that clean-up efforts so far were not enough to deal with the scale of the situation, which he called “one of the most serious environmental challenges we have faced in years”.

Andriy Pavlyuchenko, an official of the Emergencies Ministry of annexed Crimea, said today that workers had detected seven more cases of pollution along the coast in four regions of Crimea, as well as on Tuzla Island, a narrow strip of land under the Crimean Bridge that connects the south Russia with the Black Sea Peninsula.

THE Pavlyuchenko told TASS that the new contaminated area is about 14 kilometers long and that 10 ships and two aircraft are involved in coastal surveillance.

After the spill, thousands of emergency workers and volunteers are working to remove tons of contaminated sand and soil from both sides of the Kerch Strait. Environmental groups have reported deaths of dolphins, cetacean species and seabirds.

The 136-meter-long Volgoneft 212 tanker broke in two and sank, killing one crew member. Russian authorities said today that they had detected a new leak from the stern of the other ship, the 132-meter-long Volgoneft-239, which ran aground during the storm.

“Surveillance teams detected that oil had started leaking from the ship,” the operations center of Russia’s Krasnodar region, across the Crimean Strait, said in a post on the Telegram app.

Russia’s transport ministry said the new blob from Volgoneft-239 is about 2,800 square meters in size, roughly the size of 10 tennis courts. He added that experts are working to remove the waste and are monitoring for any new leaks around the clock.