World War II Explosives, Torpedo Heads and Mines: How Ocean Creatures Thrives on Discarded Armaments

In the slightly salty waters off the Germany's coast rests a graveyard of Nazi bombs, torpedoes and mines. Thrown off barges at the end of the World War II and neglected, countless explosives have fused into clusters over the years. They comprise a corroding carpet on the shallow, silty seafloor of the Bay of Lübeck in the western tip of the Baltic Sea.

Over the decades, the wartime weapons was ignored and forgotten about. A growing number of visitors flocked to the coastal areas and tranquil sea for water sports, kite surfing and entertainment venues. Beneath the surface, the munitions eroded.

Some of us expected to see a desert, with no life because it was all toxic, says Andrey Vedenin.

When the initial researchers went looking to see what they were doing to the marine environment, the team anticipated finding a barren area, with no organisms because it was all toxic, says Andrey Vedenin.

What they discovered amazed them. Vedenin recalls his colleagues exclaiming in amazement when the ROV first sent the images back. It was a memorable occasion, he says.

Thousands of sea creatures had made their homes amid the weapons, forming a revitalized marine community more populous than the sea floor around it.

This underwater metropolis was evidence to the resilience of marine life. Indeed astonishing how much life we discover in areas that are considered dangerous and risky, he states.

In excess of 40 sea stars had clustered on to one visible chunk of TNT. They were living on metal shells, fuse pockets and transport cases just a short distance from its explosive filling. Marine fish, crustaceans, anemones and bivalves were all observed on the historic weapons. It resembles a coral reef in terms of the amount of fauna that was there, notes Vedenin.

Surprising Creature Concentration

An mean of more than forty thousand creatures were residing on every square metre of the explosives, researchers reported in their paper on the finding. The adjacent region was much less diverse, with only eight thousand individuals on every square metre.

It is ironic that things that are designed to destroy all life are attracting so much life, explains Vedenin. One can observe how nature adapts after a devastating occurrence such as the World War II and how, in some way, marine life establishes itself to the most risky areas.

Man-made Features as Marine Environments

Artificial constructions such as sunken vessels, wind turbines, oil rigs and pipelines can offer substitutes, restoring some of the destroyed marine environment. This investigation demonstrates that munitions could be comparably advantageous – the explosion of life on those in the Lübeck Bay is probable to be duplicated elsewhere.

Between the late 1940s and the post-war period, 1.6m tonnes of arms were dumped off the Germany's shoreline. Countless of individuals transported them in vessels; a portion were deposited in designated sites, the remainder just discarded at sea while traveling. This is the first time experts have documented how ocean organisms has reacted.

Worldwide Instances of Marine Adaptation

• In the United States, decommissioned energy installations have transformed into reef ecosystems
• Shipwrecks from the World War I have become habitats for creatures along the Potomac in Maryland
• Tank tracks that have become habitat to coral off Asan beach in Guam

These locations become even more crucial for wildlife as the seas are increasingly denuded by commercial fishing, seafloor dredging and anchoring. Sunken ships and weapons dump sites practically serve as sanctuaries – they are not national parks, but virtually any kind of anthropogenic disturbance is restricted, explains Vedenin. Therefore a numerous of organisms that are otherwise rare or decreasing, such as the cod fish, are flourishing.

Coming Considerations

Wherever armed conflict has taken place in the last century, adjacent waters are often littered with munitions, says Vedenin. Many millions of tons of dangerous substances remain in our oceans.

The locations of these munitions are poorly recorded, partially because of national borders, restricted military information and the reality that archives are buried in old files. They pose an detonation and security hazard, as well as risk from the ongoing emission of hazardous substances.

As Germany and different states start extracting these relics, scientists hope to protect the habitats that have established nearby. In the Lübeck Bay munitions are already being extracted.

We should replace these steel remains left from weapons with certain more secure, various non-dangerous objects, like perhaps artificial reefs, suggests Vedenin.

He now wishes that what occurs in the Bay of Lübeck establishes a example for substituting structures after explosive extraction in other locations – because even the most damaging armaments can become framework for marine organisms.