AN ASSESSMENT OF UXO DUMPSITES IN THE BLACK SEA
- 1. National Institute for Research and Development on Marine Geology and Geo-ecology – GeoEcoMar
Description
In the decades following World War I and even more so during and after World War II, the major powers disposed of massive quantities of captured, damaged, and obsolete unexploded ordnance (UXO) by dumping them into the oceans.
Various projects such as UDEMM, R.E.D C.O.D., HELCOM or CHEMSEA were implemented around the world in order to study and understand the impact of UXO on the marine ecosystems.
The UXO dumpsites have the potential to become a serious public health hazard by negatively impacting different areas of human activities with serious environmental consequences. Due to a continuous increase in shipping traffic, as well as development of offshore oil industry, infrastructures associated with pipelines, wind farms and aquaculture it is required that a greater urgency is attributed to studying and developing strategies to clean up munitions from the seafloor.
The Black Sea is lacking in information regarding dumping zones of UXO, this is because following WW I and II records of such activities were poorly kept, incomplete, lost or held as a military secret.
Recent research projects and contracts implemented by Romanian geoscientists, such as ”Submarine Archaeological Heritage on the Western Black Sea Shelf – HERAS” (Caraivan et al., 2015), or ”Implementation of a geophysical investigation and monitoring tool of the Romanian maritime space security – MAR-S” (Dimitriu et al., 2019) gathered information that led to a better understanding of the situation of UXO contaminations in the western Black Sea.
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Additional details
References
- Beck A.J., Gledhill M., Schlosser C., Stamer B., Böttcher C., Sternheim J., Greinert J., Achterberg E.P. (2018). Spread, Behavior, and Ecosystem Consequences of Conventional Munitions Compounds in Coastal Marine Waters. Frontiers in Marine Science (2018), DOI: 10.3389/fmars.2018.00141
- Caraivan G., Oaie G., Bujini J., Seghedi A., Bosneagu R., Chera C., Voinea V., Palazov A., Stancheva M., Shtirkov H., Peev P., Krastev A., Mircheva D., Popa M., Stanica A., Ion G., Dimitriu R., Sava C.S., Popa A., Dutu F., Anghel S., Opreanu G., Vasiliu D., Balan S., Teaca A., Pop C., Pojar I., Scrieciu A., Iordache G., Slavova K., Hristova R., Tasev V. (2015). HERAS Book - Submarine Archaeological Heritage of the Western Black Sea Shelf: GeoEcoMar Constanta, 51 pp
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- Wilkinson I., Zilinskas R., Steiger A.M., Steiger D., Ong C., Chapman T., Brodsky B., Newman J., Brewer P.G. (2017). Chemical Weapon Munitions Dumped at Sea: An Interactive Map.https://www.google.com/maps/