World War II Munitions, Torpedoes and Naval Mines: The Way Marine Life Prosper on Discarded Weapons

In the slightly salty sea off the Germany's coast rests a graveyard of Nazi bombs, torpedoes and naval mines. Thrown off boats at the conclusion of the World War II and neglected, thousands weapons have fused into clusters over the decades. They form a decaying carpet on the low-depth, silty ocean floor of the Lübeck Bay in the western tip of the Baltic Sea.

Over the decades, the explosive stockpile was overlooked and forgotten about. A increasing amount of visitors came to the sandy beaches and calm waters for jetskiing, kite surfing and amusement parks. Beneath the surface, the munitions deteriorated.

Some of us thought to see a desert, with no organisms because it was all poisoned, explains the lead researcher.

When the initial researchers went looking to see what they were affecting to the marine environment, researchers thought they would find a barren area, with no organisms because it was all poisoned, explains the lead researcher.

What they found surprised them. Vedenin recounts his team members shouting with surprise when the underwater vehicle first sent the images back. This was a great moment, he notes.

Numerous of ocean life had made their homes on the explosives, forming a regenerated habitat denser than the seabed surrounding it.

This ocean community was evidence to the tenacity of marine life. It is actually astonishing how much marine organisms we observe in areas that are supposed to be hazardous and dangerous, he says.

In excess of 40 starfish had clustered on to one accessible fragment of TNT. They were living on metal shells, ignition chambers and storage boxes just a short distance from its dangerous content. Fish, crabs, sea anemones and bivalves were all discovered on the historic weapons. It's similar to a coral reef in terms of the quantity of creatures that was there, says Vedenin.

Unexpected Creature Concentration

An average of more than forty thousand organisms were dwelling on every square metre of the munitions, scientists documented in their paper on the observation. The nearby seabed was much poorer in life, with only eight thousand individuals on every square metre.

It is ironic that things that are intended to eliminate everything are drawing so much marine organisms, explains Vedenin. It's evident how nature adapts after a major disaster such as the second world war and how, in some way, life returns to the most dangerous places.

Man-made Features as Ocean Habitats

Man-made features such as sunken vessels, wind turbines, drilling platforms and undersea pipes can create replacements, compensating for some of the lost marine environment. This research reveals that munitions could be similarly beneficial – the explosion of marine organisms on those in the Lübeck Bay is expected to be duplicated in other locations.

Between the late 1940s and the post-war period, 1.6m tonnes of munitions were dumped off the German shoreline. Countless of workers placed them in boats; some were dropped in designated sites, others just discarded at sea en route. This is the initial instance researchers have studied how marine life has adapted.

Worldwide Instances of Marine Adaptation

• In the United States, decommissioned energy installations have turned into reef ecosystems
• Shipwrecks from the first world war have become environments for wildlife along the Potomac River in Maryland
• Military vehicle parts that have become home to reef-building organisms off Asan in Guam

These places become even more crucial for marine life as the marine environments are increasingly stripped by fishing, seafloor dredging and boat mooring. Shipwrecks and munitions areas essentially act as refuges – they are not national parks, but virtually any kind of human activity is restricted, says Vedenin. As a result a many of organisms that are usually rare or declining, such as the cod fish, are flourishing.

Coming Factors

Wherever military conflict has happened in the recent history, adjacent waters are often strewn with explosives, says Vedenin. Many millions of tonnes of dangerous substances rest in our marine environments.

The locations of these munitions are insufficiently recorded, partly because of national borders, secret military information and the fact that archives are stored in historical records. They present an explosion and safety danger, as well as danger from the continuous release of poisonous compounds.

As the German government and different states start clearing these artifacts, researchers aim to preserve the ecosystems that have formed nearby. In the Bay of Lübeck explosives are currently being extracted.

We should replace these metal carcasses originating from munitions with some more secure, various non-dangerous materials, like perhaps man-made habitats, says Vedenin.

He now aspires that what occurs in Lübeck establishes a example for replacing structures after munitions removal elsewhere – because even the most destructive armaments can become scaffolding for ocean ecosystems.