These Robots Are Recovering Dumped Explosives From the Baltic Sea
koowipublishing.com/Updated: 04/02/2025

Description
In a charming corner of the Bay of Lübeck, within sight of northern Germany’s windswept beaches, specialized clearance teams have been trawling the seafloor for the kind of catch that fishermen in these parts usually avoid—discarded naval mines, torpedoes, stacks of artillery shells, and heavy aerial bombs, all of which have been rusting away for nearly 80 years.
For much of September and October 2024, underwater vehicles, fitted with cameras, powerful lights, and sensors, have been hunting for World War II–era explosives purposefully sunk in this region of the Baltic Sea. Experts watching from a nearby platform, floating carefully above this underwater munitions dump, assess and identify each item, before—using electromagnets on the robots, or a grabber arm from a hydraulic excavator mounted on the platform—the ordnance is carefully packed away into dumpster-like containers and sealed into storage.
Tons upon tons of German munitions were hastily dumped at sea under orders from the Allied powers at the end of World War II, who sought to dispose of the Nazis’ arsenal—as well as some of their own—as swiftly and cheaply as possible. Local fishermen were paid by the boatload to toss weaponry overboard at predetermined dump sites, although plenty of bombs and ammunition were strewn elsewhere in the bay in an apparent effort to get the nasty work over with. Most of the dumping was done between 1945 and 1949.
“We’re not talking about a few unexploded bombs here,” Germany’s environment minister, Steffi Lemke, told journalists during a visit to the bay in October 2024. “We’re talking about millions of World War II munitions that were simply disposed of by the Allies to prevent rearmament.”
The clearance work last year was part of a first-of-its-kind project to explore ways to clear up this toxic legacy of war. Similar dumps dot the Baltic and the North seas, with the most frequently cited estimates suggesting some 1.6 million tons of arms were discarded in German waters alone. Mostly disposed of were conventional weapons, although several thousand tons of chemical weapons—chlorine shells, mustard gas—were also thrown out at sea.
For decades, relatively little attention has been paid to the dumps, with many scientists and authorities assuming that the highly toxic chemicals would either remain trapped inside their slowly rusting shells or disperse quickly if released. “They said that it was no problem, it would all dilute itself and nothing would happen,” says Edmund Maser, a toxicologist at the University Medical Center Schleswig-Holstein in Kiel, located along the German Baltic Sea coast. The occasional horrifying incident—Danish fishermen badly injured after hauling in mustard gas shells, or beachcombing tourists burned after pocketing wet chunks of white phosphorus, mistaking it for amber—seemed like unfortunate but only sporadic dangers.
But a wave of recent research has shown that the environmental hazards are likely greater than previously stated, and that the explosives still pose a slow-burning danger. The Baltic’s salt water has eaten away at casings, exposing toxic explosives like TNT directly to the water. Maser has been involved in research that has found TNT in mussels and fish around dump sites, and there is clear evidence that the chemicals are harming marine wildlife. He and his colleagues have found that fish living near the wrecks of warships have dramatically higher rates of liver tumors and organ damage.
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