I thought about this after reading about the new project in France where they are plotting wrecks of ships sunk in WWII. We’ve been told that each time a quart of engine oil leaks into the lake it contaminates 1000 gallons of water. And remember that Exxon Valdez diaster?
But in WWII, the U-boats sunk hundreds of thousands of tons of shipping every year, including ships that carried oil. So if so many ships were sunk during WWII, how come the Atlantic Ocean wasn’t a cesspool, and has Mother Nature cleaned up?
I always wondered about that myself. Some old wrecks are still leaking oil (like the USS Arizona) but some are reclaimed as ocean bottom, I read about how some of them are diving parks. With enough water you can dilute anything.
But I’m more concerned with modern trash. Like for example, the Soviets supposedly ditched all their used submarine reactors in the North Sea, where fishermen noticed the radiation was rising in their catch. They did this for 20 or 30 years, they suspect there’s about15 old plutonium reactors on the ocean bottom.
The ocean is massive, and very dynamic. It cleans itself pretty well. Oil tanker spills generally do damage to the shoreline, but left to itself the damage is pretty much corrected eventually. I’d imagine that if a ship goes down in the middle of the ocean, the oil would be diluted to the point where it was nearly undetectable by the time it gets to a shoreline.
Also, if a ship sinks in deep water it may take most of its oil with it, and water in the ocean deeps does not exchange readily with surface water. That’s why many credible scientists have suggested sinking nuclear waste in an ocean trench.
Finally, shipwrecks may do more good than harm, at least in the long run, because a shipwreck acts as a catalyst for reef formation. Reef ecology groups have been sinking ships as reef starters for some time now.
of the New Carissa a (non-deliciously) evil ship that wrecked off the coast. It did some environmental damage, but it wasn’t too bad compared to the informational damage it did, i.e., there was no news at all except “the fate of the New Carissa” stories and speculation and repeats of old news. The Navy torpedoed it in deep water (who says subs are no good in peacetime?).
Anyway, one of the plans of how to deal with the leaky old hulk was to get out in deep water and sink the puppy. What of the fuel oil? It’s heavy diesel, and ocean water is cold. Like all oils, it has a “gooey point”, and I suppose diesel’s is about the same as margarine. (I don’t think it’s technically a freezing point, so I hadda make up a name for it myself.) So, the ocean makes the diesel so viscous it won’t leave the tanks, at least after the hulk is settled in the frigid (near-zero) water on the bottom of the North Pacific. So I think a lot of our WWII are still full of fuel oil (and grease, for that matter) which has no real chance of interacting with the environment, unless maybe some tectonic activity (sea-floor spreading, black smokers, etc.) heats the area up. Or if an eel swims around in the fuel tank and get itself coated with buttery diesel.
A hijack but I was reading once that since 1945 any metal that has been exposed to the atmosphere has detectable traces of radioactivity from nuclear explosions. Scientists sometimes need metal to make measuring instruments without this trace radiation. The source for this metal is cutting pieces of steel off the German battleships that were scuttled off the coast of Scotland following WWI.
I was on vacation in the Caribbean just two weeks ago, and my girlfriend and I dived on a British gunboat that had sunk in 1918, during WWI.
We could make out the rudder and screws on the stern, but otherwise it was almost totally unrecognizable as a former ship. It was covered with coral and plants, and swarming…swarming I tell you!..with stingrays, pufferfish, sharks and other wildlife.
Sunken ships are like Christmas presents to the undersea world…giant Fisher-Price playsets sent down to entertain the Undersea Kingdom.