World War II Explosives, Torpedoes and Mines: How Ocean Creatures Prosper on Abandoned Armaments

In the brackish waters off the German coast lies a wasteland of Nazi bombs, torpedo heads and naval mines. Dumped from vessels at the end of the World War II and left behind, numerous explosives have fused into clusters over the decades. They form a rusting blanket on the shallow, muddy seafloor of the Lübeck Bay in the western tip of the Baltic.

Over the years, the explosive stockpile was ignored and forgotten about. A growing number of visitors traveled to the sandy beaches and calm waters for water sports, kite surfing and entertainment venues. Beneath the surface, the weapons decayed.

Researchers thought to see a lifeless zone, with no organisms because it was all contaminated, explains a scientist.

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

What they found amazed them. Vedenin recalls his scientists shouting with surprise when the underwater vehicle first transmitted footage. It was a memorable occasion, he says.

Countless of ocean life had made their homes amid the weapons, creating a renewed habitat more populous than the seabed nearby.

This ocean community was proof to the persistence of marine life. It is actually astonishing how much life we discover in areas that are considered toxic and dangerous, he states.

More than 40 sea stars had gathered on to one exposed chunk of TNT. They were residing on metal shells, ignition chambers and transport cases just centimetres from its volatile core. Fish, crabs, sea anemones and bivalves were all observed on the old munitions. You could compare it with a reef ecosystem in terms of the quantity of fauna that was present, notes Vedenin.

Surprising Population Density

An mean of more than 40,000 organisms were dwelling on every square metre of the weapons, experts reported in their study on the discovery. The nearby seabed was much less diverse, with only eight thousand creatures on every square metre.

It is surprising that items that are designed to kill all life are hosting so much marine organisms, says Vedenin. One can observe how the natural world evolves after a major disaster such as the second world war and how, in some way, marine life finds its way to the most hazardous areas.

Man-made Features as Marine Environments

Artificial features such as sunken vessels, wind turbines, drilling platforms and undersea pipes can create alternatives, compensating for some of the removed marine environment. This investigation shows that explosives could be equally positive – the explosion of marine organisms on those in the Bay of Lübeck is likely to be repeated elsewhere.

Between 1946 and 1948, 1.6m tonnes of weapons were discarded off the German shoreline. Numerous of workers transported them in barges; some were placed in specific areas, the remainder just dumped while traveling. This is the first time scientists have recorded how marine life has adapted.

Worldwide Instances of Ocean Adaptation

• In the United States, retired drilling platforms have turned into coral reefs
• Sunken ships from the World War I have become habitats for creatures along the Potomac in Maryland
• Tank tracks that have become environment to coral off Asan beach in Guam

These locations become even more valuable for wildlife as the oceans are increasingly depleted by commercial fishing, bottom trawling and anchoring. Shipwrecks and munitions areas effectively function as refuges – they are not national parks, but virtually any kind of human activity is restricted, says Vedenin. Therefore a numerous of marine species that are otherwise scarce or diminishing, such as the cod fish, are flourishing.

Future Factors

Anywhere military conflict has taken place in the recent history, nearby oceans are typically littered with weapons, explains Vedenin. Millions of tons of dangerous substances lie in our oceans.

The locations of these explosives are poorly mapped, partially because of sovereign limits, restricted armed forces records and the reality that records are buried in old files. They present an explosion and safety danger, as well as risk from the continuous emission of toxic chemicals.

As Germany and other countries start extracting these remains, researchers plan to preserve the ecosystems that have developed in their vicinity. In the Bay of Lübeck munitions are already being extracted.

Researchers recommend replace these iron structures remaining from munitions with certain more secure, some safe objects, like perhaps man-made habitats, suggests Vedenin.

He currently hopes that what transpires in Lübeck sets a example for substituting habitats after explosive extraction in other locations – because also the most harmful armaments can become framework for marine organisms.