Nazi Bombs, Torpedo Heads and Mines: How Ocean Creatures Thrives on Discarded Armaments

In the slightly salty sea off the Germany's coast sits a graveyard of Nazi bombs, torpedoes and naval mines. Discarded from boats at the conclusion of the second world war and left behind, numerous explosives have fused into clusters over the decades. They create a corroding carpet on the low-depth, muddy ocean floor of the Bay of Lübeck in the western part of the Baltic.

Over the years, the Nazi arsenal was overlooked and neglected. A growing number of tourists flocked to the sandy beaches and tranquil sea for jetskiing, kite surfing and amusement parks. Beneath the surface, the munitions eroded.

We initially anticipated to see a lifeless zone, with no organisms because it was all poisoned, explains Andrey Vedenin.

When the first scientists went searching to see what they were doing to the ecosystem, researchers thought they would find a desert, with no life because it was all toxic, explains a scientist.

What they discovered surprised them. Vedenin remembers his team members shouting with surprise when the submersible first relayed pictures. It was a memorable occasion, he says.

Thousands of marine animals had established habitats among the weapons, forming a revitalized habitat richer than the seabed surrounding it.

This marine city was testament to the tenacity of life. It is actually surprising how much marine organisms we discover in places that are considered hazardous and risky, he states.

In excess of 40 sea stars had gathered on to one visible fragment of TNT. They were living on steel casings, detonator compartments and carrying containers just centimetres from its explosive filling. Fish, crustaceans, sea anemones and mussels were all observed on the old munitions. It resembles a marine reef in terms of the abundance of fauna that was present, says Vedenin.

Remarkable Creature Concentration

An mean of more than 40,000 creatures were residing on every square metre of the munitions, experts documented in their paper on the discovery. The nearby seabed was much poorer in life, with only 8,000 individuals on every square metre.

It is paradoxical that items that are meant to destroy all life are attracting so much marine organisms, says Vedenin. One can observe how the natural world adjusts after a catastrophic event such as the second world war and how, in some way, marine life returns to the most dangerous locations.

Man-made Features as Ocean Environments

Artificial constructions such as shipwrecks, offshore windfarms, drilling platforms and pipelines can create replacements, replacing some of the destroyed marine environment. This investigation shows that weapons could be similarly positive – the explosion of life on those in the Lübeck Bay is probable to be duplicated in other locations.

Between the late 1940s and the post-war period, 1.6m tonnes of weapons were disposed of off the German shoreline. Thousands of people placed them in barges; a portion were placed in designated sites, the remainder just dumped en route. This is the first time scientists have recorded how ocean organisms has responded.

Worldwide Examples of Ocean Adaptation

• In the US, retired drilling platforms have turned into reef ecosystems
• Shipwrecks from the first world war have become homes for marine life along the Potomac in Maryland
• Military vehicle parts that have become environment to reef-building organisms off Asan beach in Guam

These places become even more important for marine life as the seas are increasingly stripped by fishing, bottom trawling and boat mooring. Shipwrecks and weapons dump sites essentially function as refuges – they are not national parks, but almost any kind of human activity is banned, explains Vedenin. Therefore a many of species that are typically rare or declining, such as the cod fish, are thriving.

Future Issues

Anywhere warfare has occurred in the last century, nearby oceans are usually strewn with explosives, states Vedenin. Many millions of tonnes of dangerous substances remain in our marine environments.

The sites of these explosives are insufficiently mapped, partly because of sovereign limits, classified defense data and the reality that archives are buried in old files. They create an explosion and safety risk, as well as danger from the persistent leakage of poisonous compounds.

As the German government and different states begin clearing these relics, experts plan to preserve the habitats that have formed nearby. In the Bay of Lübeck explosives are currently being cleared.

It would be wise to replace these steel remains left from weapons with some less dangerous, various non-dangerous structures, like maybe man-made habitats, says Vedenin.

He now hopes that what occurs in Lübeck establishes a example for substituting habitats after munitions removal in different areas – because including the most destructive armaments can become scaffolding for marine organisms.