In the brackish sea off the Germany's coast rests a collection of World War II explosives, torpedo heads and mines. Thrown off vessels at the end of the World War II and neglected, numerous munitions have fused into clusters over the decades. They comprise a corroding layer on the shallow, muddy ocean floor of the Lübeck Bay in the western tip of the Baltic.
Over the years, the wartime weapons was ignored and neglected. A increasing amount of tourists flocked to the sandy beaches and calm waters for jetskiing, kiteboarding and amusement parks. Underwater, the weapons decayed.
We initially expected to see a lifeless zone, with no life because it was all poisoned, explains Andrey Vedenin.
When the first scientists went looking to see what they were doing to the marine environment, the team thought they would find a lifeless zone, with no organisms because it was all toxic, says a scientist.
What they discovered astonished them. Vedenin remembers his colleagues exclaiming in amazement when the ROV first transmitted footage. That moment was a great moment, he says.
Numerous of ocean life had established habitats on the weapons, forming a renewed marine community more populous than the ocean bottom around it.
This marine city was proof to the tenacity of life. Indeed surprising how much life we discover in places that are supposed to be toxic and dangerous, he states.
More than 40 sea stars had clustered on to one accessible piece of TNT. They were living on steel casings, ignition chambers and storage boxes just a short distance from its dangerous content. Marine fish, crabs, anemones and mussels were all observed on the historic weapons. It's similar to a marine reef in terms of the abundance of fauna that was there, says Vedenin.
An mean of more than forty thousand animals were living on every square metre of the weapons, experts wrote in their study on the observation. The nearby seabed was much less diverse, with only 8,000 organisms on every meter squared.
It is surprising that things that are designed to destroy everything are hosting so much life, explains Vedenin. One can observe how the natural world adjusts after a devastating occurrence such as the World War II and how, in some way, life finds its way to the most dangerous locations.
Man-made features such as shipwrecks, offshore windfarms, oil rigs and pipelines can provide substitutes, compensating for some of the removed habitat. This research shows that munitions could be similarly positive – the proliferation of marine organisms on those in the Bay of Lübeck is expected to be duplicated in different areas.
Between 1946 and the post-war period, 1.6m tons of munitions were disposed of off the Germany's shoreline. Numerous of individuals placed them in barges; some were dropped in allocated areas, the remainder just discarded at sea en route. This is the first time experts have studied how marine life has responded.
These places become even more valuable for marine life as the marine environments are increasingly stripped by commercial fishing, bottom trawling and anchoring. Shipwrecks and weapons dump sites practically function as sanctuaries – they are not official reserves, but nearly any kind of anthropogenic disturbance is banned, explains Vedenin. Consequently a many of organisms that are usually uncommon or declining, such as the Baltic cod, are flourishing.
Anywhere warfare has happened in the past 100 years, adjacent waters are usually littered with explosives, explains Vedenin. Many millions of tons of explosive material remain in our marine environments.
The sites of these weapons are inadequately recorded, partially because of international boundaries, restricted defense data and the fact that documents are hidden in old files. They pose an explosion and safety danger, as well as danger from the persistent release of hazardous substances.
As the German government and additional nations begin extracting these relics, researchers aim to protect the habitats that have developed nearby. In the Lübeck Bay explosives are presently being extracted.
We should replace these steel remains remaining from munitions with certain less dangerous, various harmless materials, like maybe artificial reefs, suggests Vedenin.
He presently hopes that what happens in Lübeck creates a precedent for substituting habitats after weapon clearance elsewhere – because even the most destructive armaments can become scaffolding for marine organisms.
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