Nazi Munitions, Torpedoes and Mines: The Way Ocean Creatures Flourishes on Abandoned Armaments

In the slightly salty waters off the German coast lies a graveyard of Nazi bombs, torpedoes and mines. Dumped from vessels at the conclusion of the World War II and left behind, thousands munitions have accumulated over the decades. They form a decaying layer on the shallow, silty ocean floor of the Lübeck Bay in the western tip of the Baltic Sea.

Over the decades, the explosive stockpile was overlooked and forgotten about. A growing number of tourists came to the coastal areas and tranquil sea for jetskiing, kite surfing and amusement parks. Beneath the surface, the munitions eroded.

Some of us thought to see a barren area, with nothing living there because it was all contaminated, states a scientist.

When the first scientists went searching to see what they were doing to the marine environment, some of us anticipated finding a lifeless zone, with nothing living there because it was all toxic, says Andrey Vedenin.

What they found surprised them. Vedenin recalls his colleagues shouting with surprise when the underwater vehicle first transmitted footage. It was a remarkable experience, he says.

Countless of sea creatures had established habitats amid the explosives, developing a renewed habitat richer than the sea floor around it.

This marine city was evidence to the resilience of life. Truly remarkable how much life we discover in locations that are expected to be dangerous and risky, he says.

In excess of 40 starfish had piled on to one exposed piece of explosive material. They were living on metal shells, detonator compartments and carrying containers just a short distance from its dangerous content. Fish, crustaceans, anemones and mussels were all found on the discarded explosives. You could compare it with a coral reef in terms of the quantity of fauna that was present, says Vedenin.

Unexpected Population Density

An average of more than forty thousand organisms were living on every square metre of the weapons, experts wrote in their research on the finding. The adjacent region was much sparser, with only 8,000 creatures on every square metre.

It is surprising that things that are designed to kill everything are hosting so much life, explains Vedenin. One can observe how the natural world adjusts after a catastrophic event such as the second world war and how, in certain respects, marine life establishes itself to the most dangerous locations.

Man-made Features as Marine Habitats

Man-made constructions such as sunken vessels, wind turbines, drilling platforms and pipelines can create replacements, replacing some of the removed marine environment. This study reveals that explosives could be equally positive – the proliferation of life on those in the Bay of Lübeck is likely to be duplicated elsewhere.

Between 1946 and the post-war period, 1.6 million tonnes of arms were disposed of off the German coast. Numerous of people transported them in barges; some were placed in designated areas, the remainder just discarded at sea during transport. This is the initial instance experts have studied how marine life has adapted.

Worldwide Instances of Marine Transformation

• In the US, decommissioned energy installations have transformed into reef ecosystems
• Shipwrecks from the first world war have become environments for wildlife along the Potomac in Maryland
• Tank tracks that have become environment to coral off Asan beach in Guam

These locations become even more crucial for marine life as the marine environments are increasingly denuded by fishing, seafloor dredging and anchoring. Sunken ships and weapons dump sites essentially function as refuges – they are not national parks, but virtually any kind of human activity is restricted, explains Vedenin. As a result a lot of species that are typically uncommon or diminishing, such as the Baltic cod, are prospering.

Future Considerations

Anywhere armed conflict has taken place in the recent history, adjacent waters are usually strewn with weapons, explains Vedenin. Millions of tons of explosive material lie in our seas.

The sites of these munitions are insufficiently recorded, in part because of international boundaries, classified defense data and the fact that records are stored in historical records. They create an explosion and safety risk, as well as danger from the ongoing leakage of toxic chemicals.

As the German government and different states start clearing these artifacts, researchers plan to protect the habitats that have established around them. In the Bay of Lübeck explosives are already being extracted.

We should substitute these metal carcasses originating from weapons with some more secure, some safe materials, like possibly man-made habitats, states Vedenin.

He presently aspires that what transpires in the Bay of Lübeck creates a model for substituting material after explosive extraction in different areas – because even the most harmful explosives can become scaffolding for marine organisms.