Nazi Explosives, Torpedo Heads and Mines: The Way Ocean Creatures Prosper on Dumped Armaments

In the brackish sea off the Germany's shoreline rests a collection of Nazi bombs, torpedoes and mines. Thrown off boats at the end of the World War II and left behind, countless weapons have become matted together over the years. They create a corroding blanket on the shallow, silty seafloor of the Lübeck Bay in the western tip of the Baltic Sea.

Over the decades, the Nazi arsenal was overlooked and neglected. A growing number of tourists traveled to the coastal areas and calm waters for water sports, kite surfing and entertainment venues. Beneath the surface, the weapons decayed.

Some of us anticipated to see a lifeless zone, with no organisms because it was all contaminated, states the lead researcher.

When the first scientists went searching to see what they were doing to the marine environment, researchers thought they would find a barren area, with nothing living there because it was all toxic, says the lead researcher.

What they found amazed them. Vedenin recalls his team members shouting with surprise when the underwater vehicle first sent the images back. That moment was a remarkable experience, he notes.

Thousands of sea creatures had settled among the explosives, developing a regenerated habitat richer than the sea floor nearby.

This underwater metropolis was evidence to the tenacity of life. Truly surprising how much life we discover in areas that are expected to be dangerous and dangerous, he explains.

More than 40 sea stars had clustered on to one accessible piece of TNT. They were dwelling on steel casings, detonator compartments and carrying containers just centimetres from its explosive filling. Fish, crustaceans, anemones and mussels were all found on the discarded explosives. It resembles a marine reef in terms of the amount of animal life that was inhabiting the area, notes Vedenin.

Remarkable Creature Concentration

An average of more than 40,000 creatures were residing on every meter squared of the munitions, experts reported in their paper on the observation. The nearby seabed was much sparser, with only 8,000 organisms on every square metre.

It is ironic that things that are intended to kill everything are drawing so much marine organisms, states Vedenin. One can observe how nature adapts after a major disaster such as the second world war and how, in some way, marine life establishes itself to the most dangerous areas.

Artificial Structures as Ocean Habitats

Artificial features such as shipwrecks, offshore windfarms, drilling platforms and pipelines can provide alternatives, compensating for some of the destroyed marine environment. This investigation demonstrates that explosives could be comparably beneficial – the proliferation of marine organisms on those in the Bay of Lübeck is likely to be repeated in different areas.

Between the late 1940s and 1948, 1.6 million tons of arms were discarded off the Germany's shoreline. Countless of workers placed them in vessels; a portion were deposited in designated sites, the remainder just thrown overboard during transport. This is the first time scientists have documented how marine life has responded.

Worldwide Examples of Marine Transformation

• In the US, retired oil and gas structures have transformed into reef ecosystems
• Submerged vessels from the first world war have become habitats for creatures along the Potomac River in Maryland
• Tank tracks that have become habitat to reef-building organisms off Asan in the Pacific island

These areas become even more valuable for marine life as the seas are increasingly denuded by commercial fishing, bottom trawling and anchoring. Sunken ships and explosive disposal locations effectively act as protected areas – they are not official reserves, but nearly any kind of human activity is banned, says Vedenin. Therefore a numerous of organisms that are otherwise scarce or decreasing, such as the cod fish, are thriving.

Future Issues

Wherever armed conflict has happened in the past 100 years, surrounding seas are usually littered with munitions, explains Vedenin. Many millions of tons of volatile compounds remain in our seas.

The locations of these weapons are inadequately mapped, in part because of national borders, classified military information and the fact that documents are stored in historical records. They pose an detonation and security danger, as well as danger from the persistent release of poisonous compounds.

As Germany and additional nations start extracting these relics, scientists hope to protect the ecosystems that have established in their vicinity. In the Bay of Lübeck weapons are currently being removed.

It would be wise to replace these iron structures remaining from munitions with certain safer, some safe materials, like possibly artificial reefs, says Vedenin.

He presently aspires that what occurs in Lübeck sets a precedent for substituting material after explosive extraction elsewhere – because also the most destructive explosives can become framework for ocean ecosystems.