In the brackish sea off the Germany's coast rests a graveyard of World War II explosives, torpedoes and mines. Thrown off boats at the conclusion of the second world war and neglected, thousands weapons have become matted together over the years. They comprise a rusting layer on the low-depth, muddy ocean floor of the Bay of Lübeck in the western part of the Baltic.
Over the decades, the explosive stockpile was ignored and neglected. A increasing amount of visitors came to the sandy beaches and calm waters for jetskiing, kite surfing and amusement parks. Underwater, the munitions eroded.
We initially thought to see a desert, with nothing living there because it was all poisoned, says the lead researcher.
When the first scientists went searching to see what they were affecting to the ecosystem, researchers anticipated finding a barren area, with no organisms because it was all poisoned, explains Andrey Vedenin.
What they found astonished them. Vedenin remembers his colleagues reacting with shock when the ROV first transmitted footage. It was a memorable occasion, he recalls.
Numerous of marine animals had made their homes on the explosives, creating a renewed habitat richer than the seabed nearby.
This ocean community was proof to the persistence of life. Indeed surprising how much life we discover in areas that are considered dangerous and dangerous, he says.
More than 40 sea stars had piled on to one visible fragment of explosive material. They were residing on steel casings, detonator compartments and transport cases just a short distance from its explosive filling. Marine fish, crabs, sea anemones and mussels were all discovered on the old munitions. It's similar to a marine reef in terms of the quantity of fauna that was there, states Vedenin.
An mean of more than forty thousand organisms were residing on every square metre of the explosives, scientists wrote in their paper on the discovery. The surrounding area was much poorer in life, with only 8,000 individuals on every meter squared.
It is paradoxical that items that are meant to eliminate all life are hosting so much marine organisms, explains Vedenin. It's evident 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 hazardous areas.
Man-made structures such as shipwrecks, wind turbines, drilling platforms and undersea pipes can provide alternatives, replacing some of the removed marine environment. This study reveals that explosives could be equally advantageous – the proliferation of marine organisms on those in the Bay of Lübeck is likely to be duplicated elsewhere.
Between 1946 and 1948, 1.6m tonnes of munitions were disposed of off the Germany's shoreline. Countless of workers transported them in vessels; some were deposited in specific sites, the remainder just thrown overboard en route. This is the first time scientists have studied how marine life has responded.
These areas become even more important for marine life as the marine environments are increasingly depleted by fishing, bottom trawling and boat mooring. Sunken ships and munitions areas effectively act as refuges – they are not national parks, but nearly any kind of anthropogenic disturbance is prohibited, states Vedenin. Consequently a lot of marine species that are typically rare or decreasing, such as the Baltic cod, are thriving.
Anywhere warfare has happened in the last century, surrounding seas are typically containing munitions, explains Vedenin. Many millions of tons of volatile compounds remain in our marine environments.
The locations of these weapons are poorly documented, in part because of international boundaries, restricted defense data and the reality that documents are buried in old files. They present an detonation and safety danger, as well as risk from the ongoing release of hazardous substances.
As Germany and other countries start clearing these relics, experts plan to safeguard the habitats that have formed in their vicinity. In the Lübeck Bay weapons are presently being extracted.
We should replace these metal carcasses left from weapons with some safer, some non-dangerous objects, like perhaps artificial reefs, states Vedenin.
He now aspires that what occurs in Lübeck establishes a precedent for substituting habitats after munitions removal elsewhere – because even the most damaging weaponry can become scaffolding for marine organisms.
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