Scientists have discovered that thousands of sea creatures are thriving on Nazi bombs, torpedo heads and mines dumped off the German coast after the Second World War. The munitions, discarded in the Bay of Lübeck in the Baltic Sea, have formed a rusting carpet on the seafloor, but instead of creating a dead zone, they have become a bustling underwater metropolis.
Researchers from the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt am Main, led by Andrey Vedenin, initially expected to find a barren, poisoned environment. However, when they sent a submersible to investigate, they were astonished to see more than 40 starfish piled on a single chunk of TNT, along with fish, crabs, sea anemones and mussels living on metal shells and fuse pockets just centimetres from explosive fillings.
The study, published in Communications Earth & Environment in September, found an average of over 40,000 animals per square metre on the munitions, compared to only 8,000 in the surrounding area. Vedenin compared the density of fauna to a coral reef, noting the irony that “things that are meant to kill everything are attracting so much life.”
The munitions provide hard surfaces that are increasingly scarce in the Baltic Sea, where boulders and rocky outcrops were removed for construction. Artificial structures like shipwrecks and windfarms can replace lost habitat, and this study suggests that dumped weapons can serve a similar purpose. Between 1946 and 1948, 1.6 million tonnes of arms were dumped off the German coast, and this is the first documentation of how marine life has responded.
Vedenin noted that these dump sites act as de facto protected areas, as human activities like fishing and anchoring are prohibited, allowing species to flourish. The phenomenon is not unique to weapons; in the US, the Rigs-to-Reefs programme converts decommissioned oil rigs into coral reefs, and sunken ships from the First World War have become wildlife habitats in the Potomac River.
