In the brackish waters off the Germany's coast lies a wasteland of World War II explosives, torpedoes and mines. Discarded from barges at the conclusion of the World War II and neglected, numerous explosives have become matted together over the years. They form a decaying blanket on the shallow, silty seafloor of the Bay of Lübeck in the western part of the Baltic Sea.
Over the decades, the Nazi arsenal was overlooked and neglected. A growing number of tourists traveled to the sandy beaches and calm waters for water sports, kite surfing and entertainment venues. Underwater, the weapons decayed.
We initially expected to see a desert, with no life because it was all poisoned, states a scientist.
When the team went looking to see what they were doing to the marine environment, some of us expected to see a barren area, with no life because it was all poisoned, explains Andrey Vedenin.
What they observed surprised them. Vedenin remembers his team members reacting with shock when the submersible first relayed pictures. It was a remarkable experience, he recalls.
Numerous of ocean life had made their homes amid the munitions, creating a regenerated ecosystem more populous than the seabed around it.
This marine city was evidence to the tenacity of life. Truly astonishing how much marine organisms we find in areas that are expected to be toxic and dangerous, he states.
More than 40 sea stars had clustered on to one exposed fragment of TNT. They were dwelling on iron containers, fuse pockets and carrying containers just a short distance from its volatile core. Fish, crabs, anemones and bivalves were all observed on the old munitions. You could compare it with a coral reef in terms of the quantity of animal life that was there, notes Vedenin.
An mean of more than 40,000 organisms were residing on every meter squared of the explosives, scientists reported in their paper on the observation. The adjacent region was much less diverse, with only eight thousand organisms on every meter squared.
It is ironic that things that are meant to destroy everything are attracting so much life, states Vedenin. You can see how the natural world adjusts after a devastating occurrence such as the World War II and how, in certain respects, life establishes itself to the most dangerous areas.
Artificial constructions such as sunken vessels, offshore windfarms, oil rigs and pipelines can provide alternatives, restoring some of the lost marine environment. This study demonstrates that explosives could be comparably advantageous – the proliferation of marine organisms on those in the Bay of Lübeck is likely to be duplicated elsewhere.
Between the late 1940s and the post-war period, 1.6m tonnes of munitions were disposed of off the Germany's coast. Countless of workers loaded them in barges; a portion were deposited in designated locations, others just dumped during transport. This is the first time researchers have recorded how marine life has responded.
These areas become even more valuable for marine life as the oceans are increasingly stripped by commercial fishing, seafloor dredging and anchoring. Shipwrecks and weapons dump sites essentially serve as protected areas – they are not official reserves, but almost any kind of human activity is banned, explains Vedenin. Therefore a lot of organisms that are otherwise uncommon or declining, such as the Baltic cod, are prospering.
Anywhere armed conflict has occurred in the past 100 years, surrounding seas are typically containing munitions, explains Vedenin. Millions of tons of dangerous substances remain in our marine environments.
The locations of these munitions are poorly mapped, partly because of national borders, restricted defense data and the situation that documents are hidden in old files. They create an explosion and safety danger, as well as threat from the ongoing leakage of hazardous substances.
As the German government and additional nations start extracting these relics, scientists plan to safeguard the habitats that have developed nearby. In the Bay of Lübeck weapons are already being cleared.
We should substitute these steel remains originating from munitions with some safer, various harmless objects, like perhaps concrete structures, states Vedenin.
He presently aspires that what happens in Lübeck establishes a model for substituting structures after explosive extraction elsewhere – because including the most destructive explosives can become foundation for new life.
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