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A World War Two shipwreck is leaking hazardous chemicals into the North Sea 80 years after it sank. A fishing trawler requisitioned by Nazi Germany’s navy, the V-1302 John Mahn was sunk by British bombers in 1942.
The vessel was attacked during Operation Cerberus – also known as the ‘Channel Dash’ – a convoy mission of more than 200 ships to escort the Nazi cruiser Prinz Eugen and the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau from Brittany through the English Channel to German ports.
V-1302 John Mahn has remained at the bottom of the North Sea off Belgium since then, leaking heavy metals and explosives.
Josefien Van Landuyt and her colleagues from Ghent University have found traces of arsenic, nickel and copper in samples taken from the wreck’s hull and the surrounding sea bed.
The team also recovered PAHs. These are a group of chemicals found in fossil fuels.
He told the same publication: “If it’s anti-fouling paint or electronics or coal PAHs, they are going to last a long time.
“The PAHs at the bottom of the sea will take decades to degrade.”
Thousands of crabs and lobsters washed up on North Sea beaches from Hartlepool to Whitby in October and December last year. There is no suggestion the die-off is linked to the shipwreck.
A report issued in September said the deaths were likely caused by industrial toxins and not an algal bloom.
A spokesperson for the Department for Environment (Defra) said earlier this year its experts had concluded “a naturally occurring harmful algal bloom” was the most likely cause of the deaths, following a “thorough investigation”.
But a report commissioned by a number of North East and Yorkshire fishing associations instead concluded “poisoning by industrial toxins” was the more likely cause.
The study was ordered by the North East Fishing Collective (NEFC), which is made up of fishing industry representatives in the impacted area, and funded by The Fishmongers’ Company, with research carried out by academics from Durham, Hull, York and Newcastle universities.
NEFC said it used crowdfunded money to commission marine pollution consultant Tim Deere-Jones to look into the mass die-offs.
The report said: “Over the past couple of years, several mass mortality events have affected marine life off the English north east and Yorkshire coastlines.
“Media reports have highlighted some of these, especially the unprecedented numbers of dead and distressed crabs washed up near Teesside in October 2021.
“There is general agreement these events are caused either by natural toxins released during an unusually large offshore harmful algal bloom; or industrial toxins that have accumulated offshore and could be released from marine sediments by dredging or by storms.”
The report said the deaths had had a “dramatic” impact on the fishing industry and coastal communities.
An official report earlier this year by the Environment Agency, Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, and the Marine Management Organisation, did not identify any “single, consistent, causative factor”, but a harmful algal bloom in the area at about the same time was identified as being of significance.
The NEFC report said: “We find that satellite imagery does show a marine algal bloom off Teesside at around the time of the October 2021 mass mortality event. However, that bloom was not unusually large (several larger blooms occurred in 2021 and 2022 without causing mass die-offs).”
The researchers also said harmful algal blooms usually kill a broad range of organisms, but the Teesside events disproportionately affected crabs and lobsters, with the crabs showing “unusual twitching behaviour”.
They said pyridine – a common industrial chemical – has “come under suspicion because high levels have been found in dead crabs”.
The researchers carried out a study testing the responses of crabs to pyridine, and found the chemical “can induce exactly the same twitching behaviour as seen in affected Teesside crabs”.
The report concluded: “Our preliminary evidence suggests that crab deaths are more consistent with poisoning by industrial toxins than by natural algal toxins.
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