Nazi Explosives, Torpedoes and Naval Mines: The Way Marine Life Prosper on Dumped Armaments

In the slightly salty waters off the German shoreline lies a collection of World War II explosives, torpedo heads and mines. Dumped from vessels at the end of the World War II and left behind, countless explosives have accumulated over the years. They form a rusting carpet on the low-depth, muddy seafloor of the Lübeck Bay in the western tip of the Baltic.

Over the decades, the wartime weapons was ignored and forgotten about. A growing number of tourists came to the coastal areas and tranquil sea for jetskiing, kiteboarding and amusement parks. Underwater, the weapons decayed.

Researchers anticipated to see a barren area, with no organisms because it was all contaminated, says Andrey Vedenin.

When the initial researchers went looking to see what they were doing to the ecosystem, researchers anticipated finding a barren area, with nothing living there because it was all toxic, explains a scientist.

What they found astonished them. Vedenin recounts his team members exclaiming in amazement when the submersible first relayed pictures. This was a remarkable experience, he notes.

Thousands of sea creatures had settled amid the explosives, creating a renewed marine community denser than the seabed around it.

This marine city was evidence to the tenacity of marine life. Indeed astonishing how much marine organisms we observe in places that are expected to be dangerous and risky, he explains.

In excess of 40 starfish had clustered on to one visible fragment of explosive material. They were living on steel casings, ignition chambers and carrying containers just centimetres from its volatile core. Fish, crabs, anemones and bivalves were all discovered on the historic weapons. It's similar to a marine reef in terms of the amount of fauna that was there, says Vedenin.

Surprising Creature Concentration

An average of more than 40,000 creatures were living on every square metre of the weapons, experts wrote in their research on the discovery. The nearby seabed was much sparser, with only 8,000 creatures on every square metre.

It is ironic that things that are intended to eliminate everything are hosting so much life, states Vedenin. One can observe how nature adjusts after a major disaster such as the second world war and how, in certain respects, life finds its way to the most risky places.

Artificial Structures as Marine Habitats

Artificial features such as sunken vessels, offshore windfarms, oil rigs and pipelines can create alternatives, restoring some of the lost marine environment. This research shows that munitions could be equally positive – the proliferation of life on those in the Lübeck Bay is likely to be repeated in different areas.

Between the late 1940s and the post-war period, 1.6m tons of munitions were dumped off the Germany's coast. Thousands of people placed them in boats; some were dropped in allocated areas, the remainder just thrown overboard during transport. This is the first time researchers have studied how marine life has reacted.

Global Examples of Ocean Adaptation

• In the United States, retired drilling platforms have turned into coral reefs
• Sunken ships from the World War I have become environments for marine life along the Potomac River in the state of Maryland
• Military vehicle parts that have become habitat to coral off Asan in the Pacific island

These areas become even more important for wildlife as the marine environments are increasingly depleted by commercial fishing, bottom trawling and boat mooring. Sunken ships and weapons dump sites essentially act as sanctuaries – they are not official reserves, but nearly any kind of anthropogenic disturbance is prohibited, explains Vedenin. As a result a numerous of species that are otherwise uncommon or decreasing, such as the cod fish, are flourishing.

Future Considerations

Wherever warfare has taken place in the past 100 years, nearby oceans are usually containing munitions, states Vedenin. Millions of tonnes of volatile compounds remain in our marine environments.

The locations of these munitions are poorly documented, in part because of sovereign limits, restricted defense data and the situation that archives are hidden in old files. They create an explosion and safety risk, as well as threat from the continuous emission of hazardous substances.

As Germany and different states embark on clearing these artifacts, experts plan to preserve the ecosystems that have established in their vicinity. In the Lübeck Bay munitions are currently being extracted.

It would be wise to replace these metal carcasses left from weapons with some less dangerous, various non-dangerous materials, like perhaps man-made habitats, says Vedenin.

He presently wishes that what occurs in Lübeck creates a model for substituting material after munitions removal in different areas – because including the most destructive explosives can become framework for marine organisms.