World War II Munitions, Torpedoes and Mines: The Way Ocean Creatures Prosper on Abandoned Armaments

In the brackish sea off the Germany's coast lies a wasteland of World War II explosives, torpedo heads and mines. Discarded from boats at the conclusion of the World War II and left behind, countless munitions have fused into clusters over the years. They form a corroding carpet on the low-depth, muddy ocean floor of the Bay of Lübeck in the western part of the Baltic.

Over the decades, the wartime weapons was overlooked and forgotten about. A increasing amount of tourists traveled to the coastal areas and tranquil sea for water sports, kiteboarding and amusement parks. Underwater, the weapons decayed.

We initially anticipated to see a barren area, with no organisms because it was all contaminated, explains the lead researcher.

When the initial researchers went searching to see what they were affecting to the marine environment, some of us anticipated finding a desert, with no life because it was all poisoned, explains the lead researcher.

What they found amazed them. Vedenin remembers his colleagues exclaiming in amazement when the submersible first transmitted footage. It was a remarkable experience, he recalls.

Thousands of marine animals had made their homes on the munitions, creating a renewed habitat more populous than the sea floor around it.

This marine city was proof to the resilience of marine life. Indeed astonishing how much marine organisms we discover in places that are considered toxic and dangerous, he says.

Over 40 starfish had piled on to one visible chunk of TNT. They were living on metal shells, ignition chambers and storage boxes just a short distance from its volatile core. Marine fish, crustaceans, anemones and mussels were all observed on the old munitions. You could compare it with a reef ecosystem in terms of the abundance of fauna that was there, notes Vedenin.

Surprising Creature Concentration

An mean of more than forty thousand animals were living on every meter squared of the weapons, scientists reported in their paper on the finding. The nearby seabed was much poorer in life, with only eight thousand organisms on every meter squared.

It is paradoxical that things that are meant to eliminate everything are attracting so much life, explains Vedenin. You can see how the natural world adapts after a devastating occurrence such as the World War II and how, in certain respects, marine life returns to the most risky areas.

Artificial Features as Marine Environments

Man-made constructions such as shipwrecks, wind turbines, drilling platforms and undersea pipes can provide substitutes, replacing some of the destroyed marine environment. This investigation reveals that weapons could be comparably advantageous – the explosion of life on those in the Bay of Lübeck is probable to be found in other locations.

Between 1946 and the post-war period, 1.6 million tons of arms were disposed of off the German shoreline. Numerous of people loaded them in barges; some were placed in allocated sites, others just dumped while traveling. This is the initial instance researchers have documented how marine life has reacted.

Global Examples of Ocean Transformation

• In the United States, retired drilling platforms have transformed into marine habitats
• Shipwrecks from the World War I have become environments for marine life along the Potomac River in Maryland
• Tank tracks that have become environment to coral off Asan in the Pacific island

These locations become even more valuable for wildlife as the marine environments are increasingly denuded by commercial fishing, seafloor dredging and boat mooring. Shipwrecks and munitions areas essentially act as refuges – they are not national parks, but almost any kind of anthropogenic disturbance is banned, states Vedenin. As a result a lot of marine species that are otherwise scarce or decreasing, such as the Baltic cod, are prospering.

Coming Considerations

Wherever military conflict has taken place in the last century, adjacent waters are usually littered with weapons, explains Vedenin. Millions of tons of dangerous substances remain in our marine environments.

The sites of these weapons are poorly documented, partly because of national borders, classified defense data and the fact that archives are buried in historic archives. They present an explosion and safety danger, as well as threat from the continuous release of hazardous substances.

As the German government and other countries begin clearing these relics, experts aim to preserve the marine communities that have developed in their vicinity. In the Lübeck Bay munitions are presently being extracted.

It would be wise to substitute these steel remains originating from weapons with certain safer, some harmless materials, like perhaps man-made habitats, suggests Vedenin.

He presently hopes that what transpires in the Bay of Lübeck creates a model for replacing habitats after explosive extraction in different areas – because also the most destructive weaponry can become framework for ocean ecosystems.