World War II Munitions, Torpedo Heads and Mines: How Ocean Creatures Thrives on Abandoned Weapons
In the brackish waters off the German shoreline rests a graveyard of Nazi bombs, torpedoes and mines. Thrown off boats at the end of the second world war and forgotten about, countless munitions have accumulated over the decades. They form a corroding blanket on the shallow, silty ocean floor of the Bay of Lübeck in the western part of the Baltic.
Over the years, the explosive stockpile was overlooked and forgotten about. A increasing amount of tourists came to the coastal areas and calm waters for water sports, kite surfing and amusement parks. Below the waves, the munitions deteriorated.
We initially expected to see a barren area, with no life because it was all contaminated, states Andrey Vedenin.
When the first scientists went looking to see what they were doing to the marine environment, the team expected to see a desert, with nothing living there because it was all toxic, says Andrey Vedenin.
What they observed surprised them. Vedenin remembers his team members reacting with shock when the submersible first transmitted footage. It was a remarkable experience, he recalls.
Countless of sea creatures had settled on the weapons, developing a renewed ecosystem more populous than the ocean bottom around it.
This underwater metropolis was evidence to the persistence of life. It is actually surprising how much life we discover in places that are considered dangerous and dangerous, he says.
More than 40 starfish had piled on to one exposed piece of explosive material. They were living on metal shells, detonator compartments and storage boxes just a short distance from its dangerous content. Fish, crustaceans, sea anemones and mussels were all observed on the discarded explosives. You could compare it with a marine reef in terms of the amount of animal life that was there, states Vedenin.
Unexpected Creature Concentration
An mean of more than forty thousand animals were living on every meter squared of the explosives, experts reported in their study on the finding. The surrounding area was much less diverse, with only 8,000 creatures on every square metre.
It is paradoxical that things that are designed to destroy all life are drawing so much life, explains Vedenin. You can see how the natural world adapts after a major disaster such as the World War II and how, in certain respects, marine life establishes itself to the most risky locations.
Man-made Features as Marine Environments
Man-made structures such as sunken vessels, offshore windfarms, drilling platforms and pipelines can offer substitutes, restoring some of the lost marine environment. This investigation shows that weapons could be equally positive – the explosion of life on those in the Lübeck Bay is expected to be duplicated in other locations.
Between the late 1940s and the post-war period, 1.6m tons of weapons were disposed of off the Germany's shoreline. Thousands of workers transported them in barges; a portion were deposited in allocated locations, others just thrown overboard while traveling. This is the initial instance experts have studied how ocean organisms has reacted.
Global Instances of Marine Transformation
- In the US, retired drilling platforms have turned into coral reefs
- Shipwrecks from the first world war have become environments for creatures along the Potomac in the state of Maryland
- Military vehicle parts that have become home to coral off Asan in the Pacific island
These places become even more important for marine life as the seas are increasingly stripped by commercial fishing, seafloor dredging and anchoring. Sunken ships and munitions areas practically act as protected areas – they are not national parks, but almost any kind of human activity is prohibited, says Vedenin. Therefore a lot of species that are usually rare or decreasing, such as the cod fish, are thriving.
Future Factors
Anywhere armed conflict has occurred in the last century, adjacent waters are often littered with explosives, states Vedenin. Millions of tonnes of volatile compounds lie in our marine environments.
The sites of these munitions are poorly recorded, in part because of sovereign limits, secret armed forces records and the reality that documents are hidden in historic archives. They present an explosion and security risk, as well as danger from the ongoing leakage of hazardous substances.
As the German government and other countries embark on extracting these remains, experts aim to safeguard the marine communities that have developed in their vicinity. In the Lübeck Bay munitions are presently being extracted.
We should substitute these metal carcasses remaining from munitions with some more secure, some harmless structures, like perhaps artificial reefs, suggests Vedenin.
He now aspires that what happens in the Bay of Lübeck creates a example for substituting structures after munitions removal in other locations – because including the most destructive weaponry can become foundation for marine organisms.
