The village of Stormovoye is well known to all lovers of recreation in Crimea. This settlement is located in the western part of the peninsula, on the gentle shore of the Black Sea. Parallel to the village beach stretches Oyburskoe Lake. It is adjoined by another one — Bezymyannoe. In the south the settlement is bounded by the natural reservoir Adzhi-Baichi. All of them are reservoirs of brine, as well as therapeutic blue and black mud. But unlike Saki, access to local reservoirs is not «occupied» by a row of sanatoriums and chemical plants.
To somehow entertain guests of Stormy in between sessions of thalassotherapy and non-organized mud treatment, local entrepreneurs have created museum «Sea curiosities», which invite all comers from 16.00 to 21.00. This is the Lopakov family, and the institution itself is located in the basement of an ordinary four-story house.
The birth of the exhibit was started by the civic-mindedness of Mrs. Anna Lopakova. Many years in a row after the next storm she went to the seashore with a huge bag and collected in it the garbage picked up from the bottom. Apart from plastic bottles and sticky polyethylene she often came across really interesting things. Therefore, the idea of creating a museum with «Sea Curiosities» was born at the family council.
Having paid 20 hryvnia, any person vacationing in Stormy can examine the unique exposition. They will see things that should not be in the sea a priori. For example, plastic chairs and children’s toys, gas cylinders and electric kettles. About tragedies that once already happened in the Black Sea, tourists will be told by a collection of steering wheels, ship utensils with inscriptions of the ship owners and shell fragments left from the last 2 wars. A separate group is represented by snags and shoes overgrown with shells and seaweed. Such exhibits could easily become an entourage on the set of the next series of «Pirates of the Caribbean», if the producers of the movie knew about the existence of Ukrainian «Sea Curiosities».
Equally interesting is the shelf on which the bottles are displayed. They belong to different historical epochs. Some have been in the water for hundreds of years, and some have been found with messages in them. Another theme, on which the owners of the museum have worked, is fakes made of seafood and, separately, things made of «marine debris». This part of the exposition is exhibited in the courtyard in front of the museum in summer, and in winter it is taken indoors. The territory of the museum is enclosed by a luxurious fence with elements of «sea curiosities», which in itself can be considered a work of art.
Excursions on «Sea Curiosities» are conducted by the owner Anna Lopakova. Much attention in her stories is paid to the problems of ecology of the Black Sea, the state of its flora and fauna, as well as the principles of safe behavior of tourists on the «wild» beaches. Even those who come to vacation in Popovka, Krylovka, Saki and Yevpatoria, willingly look in Shtormovoye for the sake of «Sea Curiosities». They have worthily added to the list of man-made attractions of Crimea and continue to develop in the chosen ecological-educational-creative direction.