Nazi Explosives, Torpedo Heads and Naval Mines: How Marine Life Thrives on Dumped Armaments

In the slightly salty sea off the German coast sits a graveyard of Nazi bombs, torpedo heads and mines. Discarded from vessels at the end of the second world war and left behind, numerous weapons have become matted together over the years. They comprise a decaying carpet on the shallow, silty ocean floor of the Bay of Lübeck in the western tip of the Baltic Sea.

Over the decades, the explosive stockpile was overlooked and forgotten about. A growing number of tourists traveled to the sandy beaches and calm waters for water sports, kiteboarding and amusement parks. Beneath the surface, the weapons deteriorated.

Researchers expected to see a lifeless zone, with no life because it was all poisoned, explains the lead researcher.

When the team went investigating to see what they were affecting to the marine environment, some of us expected to see a desert, with no life because it was all toxic, explains the lead researcher.

What they found astonished them. Vedenin recounts his team members shouting with surprise when the submersible first transmitted footage. It was a great moment, he notes.

Thousands of sea creatures had settled among the explosives, creating a renewed marine community denser than the sea floor surrounding it.

This ocean community was evidence to the resilience of marine life. Indeed astonishing how much life we discover in areas that are expected to be dangerous and risky, he says.

Over 40 starfish had piled on to one exposed chunk of explosive material. They were residing on iron containers, detonator compartments and transport cases just centimetres from its explosive filling. Marine fish, crabs, sea anemones and mussels were all found on the historic weapons. It resembles a coral reef in terms of the quantity of creatures that was there, states Vedenin.

Unexpected Creature Concentration

An mean of more than forty thousand creatures were dwelling on every meter squared of the weapons, researchers documented in their paper on the observation. The surrounding area was much less diverse, with only eight thousand individuals on every square metre.

It is surprising that things that are intended to eliminate everything are drawing so much marine organisms, states Vedenin. You can see how the natural world evolves after a catastrophic event such as the World War II and how, in some way, life returns to the most dangerous locations.

Artificial Features as Marine Environments

Man-made features such as sunken vessels, offshore windfarms, oil rigs and pipelines can offer substitutes, compensating for some of the destroyed marine environment. This research shows that weapons could be comparably beneficial – the bloom of marine organisms on those in the Lübeck Bay is probable to be repeated in different areas.

Between 1946 and the post-war period, 1.6m tonnes of weapons were dumped off the German shoreline. Thousands of individuals placed them in vessels; a portion were dropped in designated sites, the remainder just thrown overboard during transport. This is the initial instance researchers have documented how marine life has reacted.

Worldwide Instances of Ocean Transformation

• In the United States, retired energy installations have transformed into marine habitats
• Sunken ships from the first world war have become environments for marine life along the Potomac River in the state of Maryland
• Tank tracks that have become habitat to coral off Asan beach in the Pacific island

These places become even more important for organisms as the oceans are increasingly stripped by fishing, seafloor dredging and boat mooring. Shipwrecks and weapons dump sites effectively serve as protected areas – they are not official reserves, but almost any kind of anthropogenic disturbance is restricted, explains Vedenin. Consequently a numerous of organisms that are otherwise scarce or decreasing, such as the Baltic cod, are prospering.

Coming Considerations

Wherever armed conflict has happened in the last century, surrounding seas are usually containing munitions, states Vedenin. Millions of tons of explosive material rest in our seas.

The positions of these explosives are poorly documented, in part because of sovereign limits, secret armed forces records and the reality that archives are stored in historic archives. They present an explosion and security hazard, as well as threat from the ongoing leakage of poisonous compounds.

As the German government and other countries begin removing these remains, experts plan to safeguard the habitats that have formed nearby. In the Bay of Lübeck munitions are presently being removed.

We should substitute these metal carcasses remaining from weapons with certain more secure, some safe objects, like possibly concrete structures, states Vedenin.

He presently aspires that what happens in Lübeck creates a precedent for substituting habitats after explosive extraction in different areas – because also the most damaging armaments can become framework for marine organisms.