World War II Explosives, Torpedo Heads and Mines: How Marine Life Flourishes on Dumped Weapons

In the slightly salty waters off the Germany's coast lies a wasteland of Nazi bombs, torpedo heads and mines. Dumped from boats at the end of the World War II and left behind, countless munitions have become matted together over the decades. They form a decaying layer on the low-depth, muddy ocean floor of the Bay of Lübeck in the western part of the Baltic Sea.

Over the decades, the Nazi arsenal was ignored and neglected. A growing number of tourists flocked to the coastal areas and calm waters for jetskiing, kiteboarding and entertainment venues. Beneath the surface, the munitions eroded.

Researchers thought to see a desert, 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, some of us thought they would find a barren area, with no life because it was all toxic, says a scientist.

What they found astonished them. Vedenin remembers his scientists reacting with shock when the ROV first transmitted footage. This was a great moment, he recalls.

Countless of marine animals had made their homes amid the weapons, developing a revitalized marine community richer than the sea floor nearby.

This ocean community was evidence to the tenacity of marine life. Truly remarkable how much life we observe in places that are considered dangerous and harmful, he says.

More than 40 starfish had piled on to one exposed fragment of explosive material. They were living on steel casings, ignition chambers and storage boxes just a short distance from its volatile core. Fish, crabs, anemones and mussels were all discovered on the historic weapons. You could compare it with a coral reef in terms of the abundance of fauna that was inhabiting the area, states Vedenin.

Unexpected Population Density

An average of more than 40,000 organisms were residing on every square metre of the weapons, researchers wrote in their research on the finding. The adjacent region was much sparser, with only 8,000 organisms on every meter squared.

It is surprising that objects that are intended to eliminate everything are hosting so much life, explains Vedenin. One can observe how nature evolves after a catastrophic event such as the second world war and how, in certain respects, life finds its way to the most dangerous locations.

Man-made Structures as Marine Environments

Artificial structures such as shipwrecks, offshore windfarms, drilling platforms and pipelines can create replacements, replacing some of the lost habitat. This investigation shows that explosives could be equally positive – the proliferation of marine organisms on those in the Bay of Lübeck is probable to be found elsewhere.

Between 1946 and the post-war period, 1.6 million tons of munitions were discarded off the Germany's coast. Countless of workers placed them in boats; a portion were placed in allocated sites, others just dumped en route. This is the initial instance researchers have documented how marine life has adapted.

Global Instances of Marine Transformation

• In the United States, retired drilling platforms have transformed into reef ecosystems
• Shipwrecks from the World War I have become environments for creatures along the Potomac in Maryland
• Military vehicle parts that have become home to reef-building organisms off Asan in the Pacific island

These places become even more important for marine life as the marine environments are increasingly depleted by commercial fishing, bottom trawling and boat mooring. Sunken ships and weapons dump sites effectively act as protected areas – they are not official reserves, but virtually any kind of anthropogenic disturbance is banned, explains Vedenin. Consequently a lot of organisms that are typically uncommon or decreasing, such as the cod fish, are flourishing.

Coming Factors

Anywhere warfare has occurred in the last century, adjacent waters are typically containing explosives, explains Vedenin. Millions of tons of explosive material rest in our marine environments.

The sites of these weapons are poorly mapped, in part because of national borders, restricted defense data and the fact that archives are stored in historic archives. They present an detonation and safety danger, as well as danger from the continuous emission of hazardous substances.

As Germany and other countries begin extracting these artifacts, scientists aim to preserve the marine communities that have established nearby. In the Lübeck Bay munitions are presently being extracted.

It would be wise to substitute these iron structures left from weapons with some safer, various harmless materials, like perhaps man-made habitats, says Vedenin.

He presently hopes that what transpires in the Bay of Lübeck creates a model for substituting material after weapon clearance elsewhere – because including the most damaging armaments can become scaffolding for marine organisms.