The bottom of the Baltic Sea is simply littered with ammunition from the Second World War. It would seem that this is an unfavorable environment for life. However, recent studies show that an entire ecosystem thrives among unexploded ordnance. This is reported by the Polish Gazeta.Pl .
The Baltic Sea is full of the remains of the Second World War. A lot of rusting ships and ships, often overflowing with fuel. For example, the remains of the German tanker Franken, resting at the bottom of the Gdansk Bay, still contain 1.5 million liters of fuel. There are also various types of bombs and ammunition in abundance, including warheads of V-1 missiles.
There are about 1.6 million tons of ammunition in German waters alone. Therefore, the results of the study, published in the well-known journal Communications Earth & Environment, may be unexpected: an amazing ecosystem has formed among the military debris.
Chemical analysis of water samples near several submerged warheads showed that the concentration of TNT (trinitrotoluene) reaches 2.73 mg /l, and the concentration of hexogen (hexogen) — 0.5 mg/l. For many aquatic organisms, these are critical values. However, fauna thrives both on damaged warheads and in other places.
Many organisms simply need a solid substrate to attach. Interestingly, for some species, the density on metal parts is significantly higher than in nearby sediments (approximately 43,000 organisms per square meter compared to 8,200).
"Although warheads currently represent an important habitat in the Gulf, their replacement with a safe artificial surface would bring even greater benefits to the local ecosystem," the authors of the publication concluded.
The study was conducted in the southwestern part of the Baltic Sea, near the Gulf of Lubeck. A group of researchers from the German Research Institute Zenkenberg am Mer and Karl von Osiecki University in Oldenburg used a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) equipped with two cameras to take pictures of ammunition and collect samples of the marine environment.
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