World War II Munitions, Torpedoes and Mines: How Marine Life Prosper on Abandoned Armaments

In the brackish waters off the Germany's shoreline rests a collection of Nazi bombs, torpedo heads and mines. Discarded from barges at the conclusion of the second world war and neglected, thousands explosives have fused into clusters over the decades. They comprise a decaying layer on the low-depth, silty ocean floor of the Bay of Lübeck in the western tip of the Baltic.

Over the years, the Nazi arsenal was ignored and neglected. A increasing amount of tourists came to the sandy beaches and tranquil sea for water sports, kite surfing and entertainment venues. Beneath the surface, the munitions deteriorated.

Researchers anticipated to see a desert, with no life because it was all contaminated, says Andrey Vedenin.

When the initial researchers went investigating to see what they were doing to the ecosystem, some of us thought they would find a desert, with no organisms because it was all toxic, says a scientist.

What they found amazed them. Vedenin remembers his team members exclaiming in amazement when the ROV first transmitted footage. This was a memorable occasion, he says.

Thousands of ocean life had established habitats among the munitions, creating a regenerated marine community denser than the ocean bottom surrounding it.

This underwater metropolis was testament to the tenacity of marine life. Indeed astonishing how much marine organisms we find in locations that are expected to be dangerous and dangerous, he explains.

In excess of 40 sea stars had gathered on to one exposed piece of explosive material. They were living on steel casings, fuse pockets and storage boxes just centimetres from its explosive filling. Fish, crustaceans, anemones and bivalves were all discovered on the discarded explosives. It resembles a marine reef in terms of the abundance of creatures that was inhabiting the area, says Vedenin.

Unexpected Creature Concentration

An mean of more than 40,000 organisms were residing on every meter squared of the explosives, researchers documented in their paper on the observation. The adjacent region was much sparser, with only 8,000 individuals on every square metre.

It is paradoxical that objects that are designed to destroy all life are hosting so much marine organisms, states Vedenin. You can see how nature adapts after a catastrophic event such as the World War II and how, in some way, life returns to the most dangerous places.

Artificial Structures as Ocean Environments

Artificial features such as shipwrecks, wind turbines, oil rigs and undersea pipes can offer substitutes, restoring some of the destroyed marine environment. This investigation reveals that weapons could be similarly beneficial – the explosion of life on those in the Lübeck Bay is probable to be repeated in different areas.

Between the late 1940s and the post-war period, 1.6m tons of munitions were discarded off the Germany's shoreline. Thousands of workers loaded them in barges; a portion were placed in specific sites, the remainder just dumped during transport. This is the initial instance experts have documented how ocean organisms has adapted.

Worldwide Instances of Ocean Adaptation

• In the United States, decommissioned energy installations have transformed into reef ecosystems
• Shipwrecks from the World War I have become environments for marine life along the Potomac River in Maryland
• Military vehicle parts that have become environment to reef-building organisms off Asan in Guam

These places become even more important for organisms as the marine environments are increasingly denuded by commercial fishing, bottom trawling and boat mooring. Sunken ships and munitions areas essentially act as protected areas – they are not national parks, but nearly any kind of human activity is prohibited, explains Vedenin. Therefore a numerous of marine species that are usually uncommon or diminishing, such as the Baltic cod, are thriving.

Future Considerations

Wherever military conflict has occurred in the past 100 years, nearby oceans are usually strewn with munitions, explains Vedenin. Millions of tons of explosive material lie in our marine environments.

The sites of these weapons are inadequately mapped, in part because of national borders, restricted armed forces records and the fact that archives are buried in old files. They create an detonation and safety risk, as well as risk from the continuous emission of toxic chemicals.

As Germany and other countries start removing these remains, experts hope to safeguard the habitats that have developed in their vicinity. In the Bay of Lübeck munitions are currently being extracted.

We should replace these metal carcasses left from munitions with certain safer, various non-dangerous materials, like possibly concrete structures, says Vedenin.

He now aspires that what occurs in the Bay of Lübeck creates a model for substituting habitats after explosive extraction elsewhere – because even the most harmful explosives can become framework for ocean ecosystems.