Baltic Sea bed littered with weapons from WWII

A leading Polish newspaper reported that the Baltic Sea bed is littered with mines, bombs and chemical weapons left over from the Second World War that could cause an environmental disaster.

Gazeta Wyborcza wrote on Tuesday that between 40,000 and 100,000 tons of war-era weaponry lie at the bottom of various parts of the Baltic Sea.

The exact quantity is hard to estimate today, according to the paper. It is difficult to define all the dumping sites. After the Potsdam conference, soldiers from the Soviet Union who disarmed ammunition depots in Poland and Germany were responsible for 'neutralizing' German chemical weapons. It added that the Gotland Basin in the sea's centre between Sweden and the Baltic states was initially selected as the main dumping site.

The route turned out to be too far for the Russians, the paper wrote. Tonnes of barrels were thrown from vessels at random places on the convoy routes. Crates of chemical weapons drifted until the wood decayed. They were later carried by the currents to sit on the sea bed. According to official Soviet records, around 40,000 tons of weapons were dumped at a depth of around 100 metres, which was a second dumping site reported by the Bornholm Basin to the east of the Danish island of Bornholm. Dozens of tonnes were also dumped in the Gdansk Basin near northern Poland's Hel Peninsula.

The chemical weapons are mostly mustard gas, aerial bombs and mines containing poison, mostly mustard gas and arsenic, which have already left local fishermen with burns.

Between 2011 and 2019 research by the Polish Academy of Sciences showed that mustard gas bombs pollute the sea to a radius of up to 70 metres, killing subaquatic flora and fauna.