This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: In April 1917, the German submarine UC-30 sailed beneath the waves off the coast of Rømø. It had originally been on a mission in Ireland, but after suffering engine trouble, it turned around and was almost home in Germany.
On board, the submarine carried 18 mines and six torpedoes, making it heavily loaded with explosives. However, the submarine never made it home. On April 19, it struck a British mine and sank.
Twenty-seven crew members perished, and the wreck vanished until it was discovered in 2016, nearly 100 years later, by Danish diver Gert Normann Andersen. The submarine is one of the wrecks that Katrine Juul Andresen, a professor at the Department of Geoscience at Aarhus University, helped investigate as part of the major research project NorthSeaWrecks. The work is published in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin.
Together with navy divers, she collected samples of the surrounding water, the seabed, and the starfish and mussels living on the wreck. "Civilian diving is not permitted on the wreck, so we received great assistance from navy divers. After receiving instructions, they dove down and collected sediment samples, water samples and wildlife samples from various locations on the wreck and from the surrounding seabed." "The divers also recorded video and took photos, which we subsequently used to assess the exposure of the mines and the condition of the wreck." After analyzing the samples, the professor concluded that the explosives inside the wreck are polluting the surrounding ecosystem.
"We found traces of TNT in the wildlife, the seabed and the water column. Pollution is definitely occurring. The question is how significant the effect is and how far from the wreck the pollution affects the marine environment.
It is likely a relatively localized source of pollution, but it will worsen as the wreck continues to deteriorate and expose more of the explosive material inside the mines," she says. The North Sea was critical during World War I for both Germany and Britain. Whoever controlled the waters could dictate which goods entered and left both countries, effectively allowing them to starve their opponent into submission.
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