World War II Explosives, Torpedo Heads and Mines: The Way Marine Life Thrives on Discarded Armaments

In the brackish waters off the Germany's shoreline rests a graveyard of Nazi bombs, torpedoes and naval mines. Dumped from vessels at the end of the second world war and left behind, countless munitions have become matted together over the decades. They create a rusting carpet on the low-depth, silty ocean floor of the Bay of Lübeck in the western tip of the Baltic Sea.

Over the years, the wartime weapons was ignored and forgotten about. A growing number of visitors flocked to the coastal areas and calm waters for jetskiing, kite surfing and entertainment venues. Beneath the surface, the weapons eroded.

Researchers anticipated to see a lifeless zone, with nothing living there because it was all contaminated, states the lead researcher.

When the first scientists went investigating to see what they were affecting to the marine environment, some of us thought they would find a barren area, with no life because it was all contaminated, says a scientist.

What they discovered surprised them. Vedenin recounts his colleagues exclaiming in amazement when the ROV first transmitted footage. That moment was a memorable occasion, he recalls.

Thousands of sea creatures had settled on the explosives, forming a regenerated marine community more populous than the seabed nearby.

This marine city was proof to the tenacity of life. Truly astonishing how much life we find in places that are supposed to be toxic and dangerous, he explains.

Over 40 sea stars had clustered on to one accessible piece of explosive material. They were living on metal shells, ignition chambers and carrying containers just centimetres from its volatile core. Fish, crabs, sea anemones and bivalves were all observed on the historic weapons. You could compare it with a marine reef in terms of the abundance of fauna that was there, says Vedenin.

Remarkable Creature Concentration

An mean of more than 40,000 animals were dwelling on every square metre of the weapons, scientists wrote in their paper on the observation. The adjacent region was much poorer in life, with only eight thousand creatures on every meter squared.

It is ironic that objects that are designed to kill everything are hosting so much marine organisms, explains Vedenin. One can observe how nature evolves after a major disaster such as the second world war and how, in some way, marine life returns to the most risky places.

Man-made Structures as Marine Environments

Artificial features such as sunken vessels, offshore windfarms, oil rigs and undersea pipes can offer alternatives, replacing some of the destroyed habitat. This study reveals that munitions could be comparably advantageous – the bloom of marine organisms on those in the Bay of Lübeck is likely to be found in different areas.

Between 1946 and the post-war period, 1.6m tons of munitions were dumped off the German shoreline. Numerous of people placed them in vessels; a portion were deposited in specific locations, the remainder just discarded at sea while traveling. This is the first time experts have recorded how ocean organisms has adapted.

Global Examples of Ocean Transformation

• In the United States, retired energy installations have become reef ecosystems
• Sunken ships from the first world war have become habitats for marine life along the Potomac River in Maryland
• Tank tracks that have become habitat to reef-building organisms off Asan beach in the Pacific island

These places become even more important for marine life as the oceans are increasingly denuded by fishing, bottom trawling and anchoring. Shipwrecks and explosive disposal locations effectively act as refuges – they are not national parks, but almost any kind of human activity is restricted, says Vedenin. As a result a lot of species that are otherwise rare or declining, such as the Baltic cod, are flourishing.

Future Factors

Anywhere armed conflict has taken place in the recent history, surrounding seas are usually containing munitions, states Vedenin. Many millions of tons of volatile compounds remain in our seas.

The positions of these weapons are poorly mapped, partially because of national borders, classified military information and the fact that archives are buried in historical records. They create an explosion and safety risk, as well as danger from the persistent emission of toxic chemicals.

As Germany and different states start extracting these artifacts, scientists plan to preserve the marine communities that have developed around them. In the Bay of Lübeck weapons are already being cleared.

It would be wise to substitute these metal carcasses remaining from munitions with certain less dangerous, various non-dangerous objects, like perhaps man-made habitats, suggests Vedenin.

He presently hopes that what occurs in the Bay of Lübeck sets a precedent for replacing material after weapon clearance elsewhere – because even the most harmful weaponry can become framework for new life.