91探花

BALTWRECK

Preventing massive marine waters chemical pollution from the leaking wrecks and munition/ weapon dumps in the South Baltic

The project addresses combating various hazardous substances in the aquatic environment in order to increase safety and water quality. There are around 20 000 known military and civilian shipwrecks on the bottom of the Baltic Sea, ca 10% of them are a source of contamination by fuels or residues of dumped munitions. More than 80 years after II World War some of the rusty wrecks leaks their hazardous fuel (eg. cancerogenic pyrolysis oil from 鈥淪tuttgart鈥� contaminated already 40 ha of Gdansk Bay). Other wrecks are close to their decomposition and need thorough inspection to evaluate the risk and real threat to the marine life and to the various economic activities at sea. Decisions regarding monitoring, cleaning, or activities in a vicinity of shipwrecks are extremely slow, since expensive and research-intensive studies are needed in each case. The BaltWreck consortium believes it is time to join forces of marine research institutions, maritime administrations and policy makers in the region to tackle this serious cross-border challenge in a methodological, efficient and internationally-concerted way. The BaltWreck objective is to contribute to reducing pollution of the Baltic Sea by hazardous fuel, munitions and other remains of shipwrecks by jointly developing, demonstrating and implementing wreck management methods. This includes developing: (1) efficient wrecks diagnostics methods, (2) in-situ remediation technologies for hazardous fuels from wrecks as well as munition and explosives, (3) testing the developed solutions in at least 3 pilot locations and (4) examining the toxicological risk for marine ecosystems caused by dumped munitions and hydrocarbon deposits. The recommendations for policy makers, local marine and cities administration will be formulated. The project aims to include municipalities located in vicinity of wrecks in the decision process, by raising awareness of decision makers and general public via a series of workshops and conferences, as well as public information campaign.

August, 2023

July, 2026

3064000

164000

EU /

Polska Akademia Nauk (PAN), Poland

Aaron Beck

Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research (IOW), Germany
Jagiellonian University (UJ), Poland
CLEANERGY LtD, Poland
North.io LtD. (NIO), Germany
German Environment Agency (UBA), Germany
Chalmers University of Technology (CHALMERS), Sweden
Nature Research Centre (NRC), Lithuania
JT Ship Service Tomasz Jatkowski (JTSS), Poland
Klaipeda University, Lithuania
Gdynia Maritime University, Poland
Association of Polish Communes Euroregion Baltic, Poland
University of Gda艅sk (UG), Poland