Amber washed up from Baltic Sea covers Pionersky beach in Kaliningrad rgn
KALININGRAD. Jan 7 (Interfax) - The beach of the town of Pionersky in the Kaliningrad region was covered with amber washed up from the Baltic Sea bottom on Orthodox Christmas's Eve.
Pionersky resident Olga Bazhenova told Interfax on Wednesday amber was washed up during a severe storm on Tuesday.
"Town residents and tourists were picking up small and medium-sized pieces of amber from seaweed and sand from dawn till dusk. Even pensioners forgot their ailments and age and scratched frozen soil with sticks like babies in a sandpit," Bazhenova said.
Amber sand can be found on the Pionersky beach quite often but such quantities of amber are rare, she said.
Some 95% of world reserves of amber, which ages approximately 50 million years, are found in the Yantarny town area on the coast of the Kaliningrad region. The Kaliningrad Amber Factory is the only commercial producer of amber in the region. Its output stood at approximately 250 tonnes of raw amber in 2014.