Danger is lurking off our coasts -- and
hardly anyone suspects that there's a problem. Weapons of war that
have been deteriorating for decades. These are ticking
time-bombs. This threat on the ocean floor
is known only to a few experts. It’s a race
against time. But is this a race
that we can win? Here at the Polish port of
Gdynia, a team of experts is getting their research
vessel ready for an expedition. The crew includes hydrographers,
biologists, and divers from the Marine Institute in the nearby port of Gdańsk.
They’ve been working together for years. They're headed for a site located in
the Bay of Gdańsk, about half-an-hour’s sailing time away. In 1999, experts
made an alarming discovery there. The team's leader is Benedykt Hac, a
former Polish navy officer. His repeated warnings about these underwater wrecks have
made him unpopular with the authorities. -Some of them don't like what we're
doing here. But it’s not our job to please them, or to make things easy for
them. This is like a mission for us. -Full stop!
We’re there! Benedykt Hac has been researching
this part of the bay for years. The site is located just
two kilometers off the coast. The pristine beaches along the Bay of
Gdańsk are known as the “Polish Riviera" -- and they're an important part of the
country's tourism industry. More than two-million Europeans spend their
summer holidays here every year. -This is a great place to take
a vacation. Just marvellous. The beaches are beautiful,
and the people are friendly. Some think it's going to be like this
forever -- but sadly, that’s not the case. There’s a problem here that only a few
people know about, and it’s very dangerous. The ship picks up speed to
do a sonar scan of the seabed. Gradually the sonar images reveal a relic
from the past that poses a major threat to the tourist beaches: the wreck of
the German hospital ship “Stuttgart.” The vessel was nearly
170 meters long. In the autumn of 1943, the ship was
anchored at Gdynia — renamed "Gotenhafen" by the occupying Germans.
The vessel was to take on wounded soldiers
from the Eastern Front. On the morning of October
9th, 378 bombers of the U-S 8th Army Air Force took
off from their bases in Britain. Their mission was to destroy the
strategically vital ports and dockyards along occupied Poland's Baltic coast. They
reached the target area in about 4 hours. The “Stuttgart” took a number of direct
hits. Fire broke out on the ship, and flames lit up the entire harbor area. The
crippled vessel was later towed out into the bay and sunk, so that it
wouldn't block the port area. Today, the "Stuttgart" is just
a footnote in history books. The site of the wreck
was soon forgotten. But in 1999, Benedykt Hac came
across the ship's wreckage while he was mapping the floor of the bay
for the Gdańsk Marine Institute. He's returned to the site
often since then. He and his researchers continue to
monitor the condition of the wreck. Today, divers are braving the
ice-cold water to have a look. The “Stuttgart” lies just 20
meters below the surface. It's overgrown with
seaweed and shellfish. There's not much left of the vessel, but
the wreckage is spread out over an area that would cover two football
fields. In the 1950s, parts of the ship were blown up in an
operation to salvage scrap steel. At first glance, the wreck and the area
around it don't seem to pose a threat. The divers will use special equipment
to take samples from the seabed. The first sample that's brought up
shows why Benedykt Hac is so concerned. It contains thick globs
of oil. The researchers call them the “Black
Tears of the Sea." Over the years, Hac and his team have
collected over 1,000 seabed samples from this site. But this is the most dangerous
material that they've found so far. It's a thick, foul-smelling mass
that contains a lot more oil than sand. -Look at
all that oil! -I’ve never seen
anything like it here before! -And it
really stinks! The researchers will take the mud back
to their laboratory for closer inspection. -We’re on the brink of an ecological
catastrophe here, and I don't think we can do anything more to
prevent it. This site is completely contaminated. All forms of
life have been eradicated. Benedykt Hac intends to take another
200 seabed samples so that he can assess the extent of the
pollution in the Bay of Gdańsk. Is the “Stuttgart” just a tragic one-off
case? What about all the other sunken warships that date
back to World War II? Do they pose a threat to
the environment as well? Less than 20 kilometers away, we find
the Westerplatte peninsula on the Bay of Gdańsk. This is where the
first shots of World War II in Europe were fired --
on September 1, 1939. At 4:45 AM, the German
battleship “Schleswig Holstein” opened fire on
Polish positions. The war would drag on until 1945 -- on
land, and at sea. The Allies and the Axis Powers had huge navies
that battled for supremacy. Allied merchant shipping
was often targeted... ...as Germany’s navy and air
force tried to cut supply lines. German U-Boats, known as the “Grey Wolves,”
took a huge toll on allied shipping. In June 1942, they destroyed
an average of four vessels a day. But what was the total number of ships
that were sunk during the war? And how many of them pose an environmental threat
today, like the the "Stuttgart" does? To find out more, we travel to
Tampa, on Florida's Gulf Coast. Every year, U-S Coast Guard officials,
scientists, and salvage experts take part in the “Clean Gulf" conference, to exchange
ideas on how to combat oil spills at sea. Among those at this year's session is
American biologist and environmental analyst Dr. Dagmar Schmidt Etkin. In
2004, Etkin began a study on the number of potentially dangerous
wrecks in the world's oceans. -I collected data on different wrecks in
different places, including a number of German databases -- which I translated
from German into English. And some of those were based on, you know,
which U-boat had sunk which vessels. For two months, Etkin searched through
archives and gathered data from sources around the world. She also examined
sonar images of shipwrecks. Etkin's study included only vessels that had
combustion engines, and a weight of more than 400 gross register
tons -- or 150 tons for tankers. -So I found 8,500-and-something wrecks
worldwide -- and about three-quarters of those were World War II-related.
It was a surprise, you know. These sunken ships can be found near ports,
at the sites of naval battles, and along trade routes. The number of World War II
era wrecks is said to be more than 6,300. They include Italian freighters in the
Red Sea and Japanese battleships in the Pacific. The majority of
all wrecks in the last 100 years of navigation
history date back to the war. Many of the ships that went down
were filled with fuel or crude oil. No one knows how much of that material is still
trapped in the wrecks -- but Dr. Etkin came up with an estimate, based on the number
of large ships that had combustion engines. -If I had no information, I looked at the
size of the vessel and the type of vessel: a tanker or a non-tank vessel, a bulk
carrier, or a Victory ship, or something like that. And I assumed, 'Well, let's say
at least ten-percent of the oil may still be on there, maybe 90 percent, maybe all
(of it), we dont know' -- so I have a range of values. So I estimated, using that
methodology, estimated about 2.5- to 25-million tons of oil could potentially be
on these wrecks. And that was (a cause for) concern -- because (it) could
potentially leak out, and cause the same kinds of (damage) we see in
other oil spills that occur now. In March 1989, the tanker Exxon Valdez
ran aground off the coast of Alaska, and spilled more than
37,000 tons of crude oil. But that's just a fraction of the amount
of material that's lying in World War II- era wrecks. Dr. Etkin says that those
sunken ships could contain up to 15 million tons of oil — about 400 times the amount
that was spilled by the Exxon Valdez. -I presented my results on the numbers,
and the reaction was: 'This is too big a problem, and we can’t deal with it.' At
least here in the United States, but also in other parts of the world, it's sort of
buried. 'It’s too complicated. We're not going to be able to deal with it. It's too
expensive and so there's nothing we can do. Dr. Etkin's study was published more
than a decade ago. Since then, experts have discussed the shipwreck oil problem at
conferences, but have taken little action. The delay has had serious consequences.
Some of the oil has already started to leak — because the tanks where it
was stored are starting to disintegrate. A number of World War II wrecks lie
off the east coast of the United States. This research vessel is
operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, or NOAA for short. The team on board this ship is
constantly on the lookout for World War II shipwrecks. Today, they're conducting
a search off the coast of North Carolina. Before Dr. Etkin's study was published,
there was little interest in these sunken ships, except among
underwater archaeologists. But the experts at NOAA soon realized
that they needed to learn a lot more about World War II-era wrecks
and their potentially deadly contents. The researchers investigate every sunken
ship that they find. They try to determine the extent of rust damage, and whether
any oil is leaking out. They use precision laser equipment to measure
every millimeter of the wreck. One of NOAA's main tasks is to protect
America's ocean- and coastal resources. This is NOAA heaquarters in Maryland.
Marine researcher Lisa Symons is in charge of monitoring
wrecks located in US waters. Symons was alarmed by Dr. Etkin’s study.
She hadn’t realized that there were so many wrecks or that they
contained so much fuel. -Well, there was a lot of concern --
and that was something that we were very aware of. Because there's been a lot
of allegations about the waters of the US, the waters of Germany, Europe,
and Japan being full of ticking time-bombs. Symons wanted to find out more about
that threat. In 2010, the U-S Congress provided one-million dollars
to help NOAA determine the risk posed by
these sunken ships. -It has taken a lot of very painstaking
research effort with the archives (and) going back to the newspaper records.
Sometimes you can find living crew members who remember being on a vessel,
or hearing about what happened to a vessel. The experts use 21 separate criteria to
rank shipwrecks in terms of risk, including the size of the vessel, and the type
and amount of oil that's still on board. Right now, Symons is studying the wreck
of the merchant vessel "Coast Trader." The ship was torpedoed and sunk by
a Japanese submarine off the coast of Washington state in June
1942. The records indicate that there still could be
1,000 tons of fuel on board. Such information is often reliable --
but sometimes the researchers can find out more by using underwater robots.
The team wants to determine where the torpedo actually
struck the ship. Their investigation reveals
that the vessel was heavily damaged, and probably
lost a lot of oil as it sank. So this wreck now seems less of a danger
than was first feared. But other wrecks could contain more oil than the records
indicate. NOAA simply doesn't have the resources to use robots to
study all these sunken ships. The researchers so far have examined
573 major shipwrecks, and have written detailed reports on 87 of them. 36 were
believed to pose a serious threat if all their oil leaked out. And five World War
II-era wrecks were considered a major risk that could cause serious
environmental damage. -The target audience though is the
United States Coast Guard: 'These are the wrecks in your area of concern that we
did analysis of. This is what our findings are. These are the wrecks that we
recommend that you put into active monitoring.' And it's up to the US Coast
Guard to determine whether or not they want to do an in-water
assessment, and then determine whether or not they
want to remove the fuel. But the U-S Coast Guard has so far not
carried out an investigation of any of the five wrecks listed by NOAA
as extremely dangerous -- so they obviously haven't gotten
around to pumping out the oil. The Coast Guard seems to be taking a
“wait and see”approach. The situation is the same in some other countries
that have to deal with this problem. But the experts at NOAA
are taking an active approach. The agency operates its own
satellite and information center. Here, analysts evaluate data in
real time for the U-S Weather Service. They also work out
long-term climate models. And they monitor the surface of the
oceans around the clock, keeping an eye out for any oil spills. These experts use
radar images to spot potential problems. The researcher is focused on an area off
the eastern tip of Long Island, New York. The NOAA team also pays close attention
to the sites in which possibly dangerous shipwrecks have been found. This one is
not on the list of high-risk sites, but the analyst spots an unusual
pattern. It could be an oil leak. He marks the dark patch, and measures
it. It turns out to be nine kilometers long and 150 meters wide — with a total
area of about one-point-five square kilometers. He sends
the data to Lisa Symons. Symons is familiar with this wreck. It's a
British tanker that was sunk by a German U-boat in January 1942. NOAA experts spot
oil slicks near the site from time to time. The Coast Guard started pumping oil out
of this wreck in April 2019, over concerns that the leaking oil could reach coastal
areas. But the authorities don't often have the resources to take action quickly to
deal with potentially dangerous situations. -It is a question of money -- but for
some people, they're more concerned about trying to deal with their issues now
than (to deal with) a potential threat. It IS possible to remove oil from sunken
ships, but it's expensive. In April 2015, a Russian fishing trawler -- the “Oleg
Naydenov” -- caught fire and sank off the island of Gran Canaria. The ship was
carrying 1,000 tons of fuel, but salvage crews later managed to pump out most
of it. It was a difficult job, not least because the trawler was sitting
2,700 meters down on the ocean floor. The operation cost
30 million euros. -At this point, I believe we can take
care of any wreck. We can operate in any operational environment, and (at) any ocean
depth, at this point. It's just a matter of making the decision to go and look for
the wreck, and then to solve the problem. Jim Elliott is a former Coast Guard
officer. He's also vice-president of a major salvage company, and president
of the American Salvage Association -- so he knows about these kinds
of operations. Today, if a ship sinks and its oil threatens the
environment, the material is pumped out. Otherwise, the ship's owner will be
held liable for any environmental damage. In the case of the Russian fishing trawler,
robots cut access holes in the fuel tanks. Then, funnel-shaped collection
containers were installed to suck out the oil. That's fine for modern vessels, but
what about World War II-era shipwrecks that may be disintegrating?
Jim Elliott says that those operations are
extraordinarily complex. -To be honest with you, it's very rare that
we do this. It's amazing that we're still talking about these wrecks, and they
haven’t been... the issues hasn’t been solved. But there's an argument that if
that oil releases, if you're in an environmentally-sensitive area, it could
be a lot more catastrophic and definitely a lot more expensive in the long run to do
that. So for example, you're dealing with a pollution-recovery cost -- and once the
oil is released from that wreck, you can only recover, say, ten- to 25-percent
with current technology on the surface. So really, it’s a losing game
once the oil is released. Many countries have adopted a "wait
and see" approach to these situations — but Norway has pursued
an aggressive strategy. Norway's coastline is filled with fjords,
islands, and bays -- and covers a total of more than 25,000
kilometers. An oil leak here could result in an
environmental catatrophe. Norwegian coastal authorities are
committed to a policy of prevention. Hans Petter Mortensholm is part of
the response team that specializes in oil removal. Right now, he’s headed for
a site where a German warship sank. He and his team find a small oil slick,
which is definitely a cause for concern. The slick indicates that oil is slowly
leaking out of the wreck. Such incidents are common here, given the extent of German
naval operations in Norway during the war. -People in Norway (who live) along
the coastline... I think they are used to seeing oil on the
surface from the ship wrecks. -"Nazi warships, discovered
along the entire coastline, started steaming up
the Norwegian fjords." Germany launched a major combined-arms
attack on Norway in April 1940. British naval- and ground forces that had
been deployed to the region offered stiff resistance, especially around the
port of Narvik. The German navy lost two cruisers, and ten destroyers --
a substantial portion of its fleet. The wreckage of ships that were sunk in
those battles can still be seen along the coast. The destroyer "Georg
Thiele" was damaged by British warships, and ran
aground east of Narvik. A total of about 900 ships were sunk
in Norwegian waters during the war. The coastal authorities have
classified 29 of them as “extremely dangerous” because of
the fuel that's still on board. Some of the wrecks, including the
"Georg Thiele," are popular with scuba divers -- despite the fact that
they contain the remains of sailors. But few of the divers
realize the threat that is posed by the oil that continues
to leak out of these wrecks. Now, Hans Petter Mortensholm is heading
out to survey some shipwreck sites. This aircraft is outfitted with high-definition
cameras that can spot oil slicks quickly. At least once a week, Mortensholm
and his team check all the wrecks that are classified as dangerous. Today, they'll
fly over the Oslo Fjord. One-fifth of Norway’s population
lives near this narrow inlet. An oil spill here would
reach land in no time. This is the Oscarsborg Fortress. In
April 1940, the fortess managed to delay a German naval force headed for Oslo
-- and its guns sank the heavy cruiser "BlĂĽcher" -- which went down with
more than 1400 tons of fuel on board. The “Blücher” still lies on the floor of
the fjord, 70 meters down. It has been officially designated as a war memorial --
to protect it from looters. But the wreck no longer poses a serious
threat to the environment. Since the BlĂĽcher sank, it's
been leaking small amounts of fuel. In 1994, the Norwegian coastal authority
had most of what was left pumped out. -There is still some left. About (40 to 50)
estimated cubics of diesel, because they didn’t empty the tanks close to the
ammunition storage rooms, due to the risk. And in addition, when you empty
a wreck of remaining oil, you will always have small pockets with
diesel still in the wreck. Mortensholm confirms that some
oil is still leaking out of the wreck. In fact, he may have to organize
another pumping operation -- because the "BlĂĽcher" and other
warships are disintegrating. -We also react because something is
starting to leak more. But we have also emptied wrecks because of a risk they
might pose in maybe ten- to 20 years. The reason why we do these (kinds)
of measures now is mainly due to the corrosion. In ten- to 20
years, it might be too late to do any physical
operations on the wreck. This disintegration of sunken World War
II-era ships is one big reason why Norway is taking active measures
to protect its coastal areas. It's one of the few
countries that have done so. Steel structures that are under water
lose between half a millimeter and two millimeters of thickness
per decade -- depending on salt content, water
depth, and temperature. Australian researchers have discovered that
if these structures lose between three- and ten millimeters of thickness, they
can become unstable and can break apart. Many of these wrecks have gotten to
this point already, or will do so soon. That's why the Norwegian authorities
have ordered seven more wrecks to be pumped out. The steel walls of the
fuel tanks on these ships are still stable enough to allow for the
installation of drainage valves. But when crews started emptying the
tanks of the German destroyer “Erich Giese,” they discovered a new
danger: a highly toxic kind of fuel. -Especially the German bunker-oil has
an extremely strong smell -- so we were (interested) to see how toxic is the oil,
the bunker-oil from the Second World War. Mortensholm sent a sample of this oil to
the SINTEF laboratory in Trondheim for analysis. SINTEF is one of Europe's
largest independent research oganizations. Oil slicks in Norway can be difficult to
deal with. The oil can congeal in the icy water, and that can
complicate the clean-up effort. The size of the oil droplets determines
how broad and thick an oil slick is. Another important factor is the type of
oil -- and there are many. The SINTEF researchers have tested and analysed
more than 3,000 different kinds of oil. That includes the fuel that was pumped
out of the German destroyer “Erich Giese.” One test was designed to determine how
oil mixes with water in wave swells. The sample was rotated in
this device for 24 hours. Meanwhile, the scientists analyzed the
specific chemical composition of the ship's oil -- and they were surprised to find that
some of the values were unusually high. -We have never seen that before --
so we thought first it was some kind of contamination in our laboratory. But
then we did a new setup, and it was the same. And we looked at the chemistry,
and understood that this is a really strange oil. We have never seen
anything as toxic as this before. Later tests showed that the oil had
mixed with sea-water to create a thick sludge. That material would be difficult
to pump out of a sunken ship in an emergency. By comparison,
tests on World War II-era British oil indicated that it did not
mix with sea-water at all. Then the researchers carried out a series
of experiments to find out how this oil would affect sea-life --
specifically, the tiny crustaceans that are a key part of the
foodchain in the ocean ecosystem. The scientists prepared a mixture of
40 parts sea-water and one part heavy oil from the German destroyer.
The crustaceans were placed in the solution, and studied
over a period of four days. The final result: all of them
either died, or became paralyzed. The researchers had no idea what
made this particular type of oil so toxic. Then, they came across a U-S
intelligence report from 1945 that outlined Germany's reliance on synthetic fuels
during the war. Much of that fuel was produced from coal that had been
treated with hydrogen at high temperatures. This synthetic fuel contained more toxic
substances than conventional fuel did. -It has a high potential for actually
causing adverse effects on the biota. So there is something that should not be
left around for waiting, for corroding into pieces, and then start to do action about
it. But it is something that should be preferably removed
in a controlled manner. Benedykt Hac studied the Norwegian
tests on German fuel, and found that their results were similar
to analysis that he had done on oil recovered from
the hospital ship“Stuttgart.” Hac knows that this highly toxic oil is
contaminating the seabed -- but he has no idea how much of it has leaked into Gdańsk
Bay since the vessel was sunk in 1943. He's come to the archive
section of the National Maritime Museum to do
some research on the vessel. These documents show that the "Stuttgart"
was ready to set sail when it was sunk. That means it was almost certainly
full of highly toxic synthetic fuel. -The fuel spilled out -- and it was very
heavy, so it sank right to the seabed. My research indicates that the
ship was carrying between 850- and 1,000 tons of
fuel. That’s an awful lot. And tests indicate that the pollution is
spreading along the seabed. When Hac found the wreck in 1999, an estimated
25,000 square meters were contaminated. Ten years later, that had increased to
32,000 square meters. And some of the oil is moving quickly, because it's
flowing down an underwater slope. It now covers an area equivalent to more than
50 football fields. Hac is trying to come up with a solution for what he
considers an environmental catastrophe. -If we were to haul up the wreck and all
the polluted soil, it would cost hundreds of millions of euros. Then we'd
have to figure out where to store it all. -We could cover the site
with a protective layer of sand, and that could cost
between 15- and 20-million. Hac believes that the expense
would be worth it, because he says that the fate of the
bay's ecosystem is at stake. -But the government never seems to
have money for these kinds of projects, and the officials just try to ignore
the problem, and push it away. -They say, 'No, no! We're short of money
as it is, and now you ask for all this!' And the "Stuttgart" is not the only
pollution problem here. There are more than 30 World War II-era
wrecks in the Bay of Gdańsk. Hac is particularly worried about the
German fuel tanker “Franken” that was sunk by the Soviet
air force in April 1945. It could still be holding up
to three metric tons of fuel -- much more than the amount that
has leaked out of the "Stuttgart." But it’s likely that neither
Poland nor Germany will take responsibility
for pumping out the oil. There are more than 6,300
wrecks like this one around the world, and they pose a serious
threat to the environment. -It is a problem that's not
visible until it really happens. -So it’s... 'If the vessel breaks up, if
there's a spill, then we'll deal with it.' -These ships are doing nothing
but deteriorating. (They've been) sitting in salt water
since the early (1940s). -It’s going to become a chronic process --
and you can either deal with it in place, or you can deal with cleaning up oil
on the beaches on a more routine basis. -The question is not 'whether'
but 'when' this will happen. And it's up to us to
decide how to respond.
The 20th century really laid a shitty minefield for the 21st to traverse.
Here's an even better one, a WWII German sub sunk off Norway's fishing grounds:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_submarine_U-864
That's seems like a wee bit of hyperbole.
How could a long-sunk ship hold/spill more oil than a burst oil-well pipe spewing directly into the ocean?