Sanderson and his colleagues took the known concentrations of various contaminants in the sediment, including the biocide tributyltin (TBT), heavy metals and the chemical-warfare agents, to see what was being stirred up. Their models showed that the explosions, which happened at about 70 metres deep, threw up a total of 250,000 tonnes of sediment, which reached up to 30 metres below sea level. The researchers used decades of monitoring data of the sediment in the busy shipping area of the Bornholm Basin, and hydrological models of sediment transport, to work out the impact of the blasts, each of which is estimated to have been equivalent in power to the explosion of 500 kilograms of TNT. They scrambled to work out how these chemicals might affect marine life. A team of environmental scientists, led by Hans Sanderson at Aarhus University in Denmark, were concerned that the consequences not be overlooked, particularly considering that the blasts happened in the vicinity of a historical dumping ground for chemical warfare, including mustard and arsenic agents from the Second World War.
It isn’t clear who was behind the explosions, but the most recent speculation is that a pro-Ukrainian group was responsible.īeneath the dramatic sight of bubbles belching from the sea, the explosions also threw up sediment from the sea bed, returning it to the water column. Last September, a series of four explosions ruptured the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines - which run from Russia to Germany - close to the Danish island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea, releasing more than 100,000 tonnes of methane into the sea and the atmosphere. The explosions that blasted holes in the underwater Nord Stream gas pipelines kicked up long-buried toxins at levels high enough to threaten marine life for more than a month, analysis of the site suggests.
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