__NOTOC__ Chushka Spit () is a sandy spit in the northern part of the Strait of Kerch. It extends from Cape Achilleion and the town of to the south-west in the direction of the

Black Sea The Black Sea is a marginal sea, marginal Mediterranean sea (oceanography), mediterranean sea lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bound ...

for almost . Administratively, it belongs to Temryuksky District,

Krasnodar Krai Krasnodar Krai (, ) is a federal subjects of Russia, federal subject of Russia (a krai), located in the North Caucasus region in Southern Russia and is administratively a part of the Southern Federal District. Its administrative center is the t ...

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

Geography

The Chushka Spit forms the northern shore of

Taman Bay The Taman Bay (Russian language, Russian: Таманский залив) is a shallow bay or gulf on the east coast of the Strait of Kerch shaped on the southern side by the Tuzla Spit and to the north by the Chushka Spit. It dips into the Taman P ...

; the southern shore was formerly the Tuzla Spit. It has many long branches extending to the south. In 1914 a

lighthouse A lighthouse is a tower, building, or other type of physical structure designed to emit light from a system of lamps and lens (optics), lenses and to serve as a beacon for navigational aid for maritime pilots at sea or on inland waterways. Ligh ...

with a fixed red light at a height of was constructed. A railway line and a highway run along the spit to Port Kavkaz, at the locality of Chushka, towards the end of the spit. As well as freight being shipped through the port, it is the terminal of the Kerch Strait ferry line connecting the Taman Peninsula with

Crimea Crimea ( ) is a peninsula in Eastern Europe, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, almost entirely surrounded by the Black Sea and the smaller Sea of Azov. The Isthmus of Perekop connects the peninsula to Kherson Oblast in mainland Ukrain ...

. The Kerch railway bridge that was built in 1944, then damaged by storms and ice and dismantled in 1945, ran from Chushka across the strait to the

Kerch Peninsula The Kerch Peninsula is a major and prominent geographic peninsula located at the eastern end of the Crimean Peninsula. This peninsula stretches eastward toward the Taman Peninsula between the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. Most of the peninsula i ...

Ecology

During a storm in November 2007, a Russian-flagged

oil tanker An oil tanker, also known as a petroleum tanker, is a ship designed for the bulk cargo, bulk transport of petroleum, oil or its products. There are two basic types of oil tankers: crude tankers and product tankers. Crude tankers move large quant ...

was damaged off the Chushka Spit, resulting in the release of more than 2000

metric ton The tonne ( or ; symbol: t) is a unit of mass equal to 1,000 kilograms. It is a non-SI unit accepted for use with SI. It is also referred to as a metric ton in the United States to distinguish it from the non-metric units of the sh ...

s of

fuel oil Fuel oil is any of various fractions obtained from the distillation of petroleum (crude oil). Such oils include distillates (the lighter fractions) and residues (the heavier fractions). Fuel oils include heavy fuel oil (bunker fuel), marine f ...

.Dmitry Ya Fashchu
Marine Ecological Geography: Theory and Experience
page 409 Springer Science & Business Media, 2011, 434 pages

Invertebrate Invertebrates are animals that neither develop nor retain a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''spine'' or ''backbone''), which evolved from the notochord. It is a paraphyletic grouping including all animals excluding the chordata, chordate s ...

s such as '' Mytilus galloprovincialis'' were badly affected by the spill, but recovered by the following summer. G.A. Kolyuchkina et al
Long-term Effects of Kerch Strait Residual Oil-Spill: Hydrocarbon Concentration in Bottom Sediments and Biomarkers in ''Mytilus galloprovincialis'' (Lamarck, 1819)
Turkish Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 12: 461-469 (2012) DOI: 10.4194/1303-2712-v12_2_37

References

{{commonscategory, Kosa Chushka, position=left Spits of Krasnodar Krai Spits of the Sea of Azov Temryuksky District Kerch Strait Lighthouses in Russia Ports and harbours of Russia Geography of Krasnodar Krai

Geography

Ecology

See also

References