The fear of oil from Nazi ships – DW – 26.09.2024

Brazilian marine biologists have solved a mystery that has long puzzled researchers from all over the world: Where do the heavy rubber blocks come from that have been washing up on beaches in northeastern Brazil for several years?

According to a study by the Institute for Marine Research (Labomar) at the Federal University of the Brazilian state of Ceará (UFC)and the Autonomous University of Barcelona, ​​the rubber bales, which weigh up to 200 kilograms, come from the German ship MS “Weserland”. It sank on January 3, 1944 and lies at a depth of more than 5,000 meters in the Atlantic Trench.

Raw materials for war

Rubber was an important material for the production of cars, airplanes and uniforms during World War I and World War II. During World War II, Germans traveled to Southeast Asia, including Singapore, Malaysia and former Indochina – now Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia – to create latex bales.

They also find metals such as cobalt, tin and the solid solution wolframite. According to calculations by Brazilian marine research, the cargo of the MS “Weserland” could be worth between 17 and 68 million US dollars today, based on the tin price of May 2021. “This ship was loaded with wolframite, a commodity that has experienced a boom on the stock market, especially during the pandemic, because it is used to make cell phones, tablets and computers,” explains Luis Ernesto Arruda Bezerra from the Institute of Marine Research at the UFC .

“Shipwrecks are ticking time bombs”

In a study soon to be published in the scientific journal Ocean and Coastal Research (OCR) and which is available to DW, it is proven that the release of the rubber bales from the wreck coincided with the rise in the price of the metal cargo. “This supports the hypothesis of unauthorized salvage from the deep sea in international waters,” says the foreword to the study. The journal is published by the Institute of Oceanography at the University of São Paulo.

There are an estimated three million sunken and abandoned ships in the oceans worldwide. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), 8500 “potentially environmentally harmful wrecks”.

Allies give away mass quantities of submarines

Using mathematical simulations and analysis of currents between Brazil and Africa, researchers from the Federal Universities of Alagoas (Ufal) and Ceará (UFC) have determined that the rubber in two former German Nazi ships known to have sunk in the South Atlantic during World War II.

The Sixtant websitestores information about ships sunk in the South Atlantic. The UFC researchers used it to search for the origin of the rubber bales. The website shows 25 German submarines and one Italian submarine that were sunk during World War II in a joint operation by the US, Brazilian and British navies.

The website listed a total of 548 ships sunk in the South Atlantic between 1939 and 1945, 56 of which were of German origin.

There were also ships that carried more than 7,000 tons of fuel oil and 1,200 tons of diesel oil, such as the Esso Hamburg, which was given away in June 1941. According to the Sixtant website, at least four ships carried fuel oil and five ships carried rubber.

The first rubber bales washed up in Brazil in 2018 and 2019 came from the MS “Rio Grande”. The German ship was sunk by the United States in 1944 when it tried to break the naval blockade imposed by the USA.

Hardly any control in international waters

The UFC researchers suspect that the rubber blocks are breaking away from the ships for two reasons: firstly, due to the natural decay of the shipwrecks. And secondly, due to the ongoing hunt for raw materials by pirates and illegal companies.

They point out that monitoring of shipwrecks in international waters off the Brazilian coast to identify potential polluters is not achieved. So far, this monitoring is carried out by the United States.

The UFC will try to map the shipwrecks to classify the risks they pose to the Brazilian coast. “But it is not a simple investigation because most of these ships lie at a depth of more than 4,000 meters,” says Marcelo Soares of the UFC’s Institute of Marine Research.

“Side effect” environmental catastrophe

“The company dismantles a ship to extract the metal, and as a side effect, rubber and oil can leak out, which reach the coast because the currents bring them here. The question is not if the oil will leak, but when it will leak,” explains marine researcher Arruda Bezerra.

Between 2020 and July 2024, the Brazilian Navy recorded an average of 14 oil spills of various origins off the Brazilian coast per month, for a total of 758 incidents. This year, 87 cases have already been detected, involving 153,700 liters of oil spills.

He fears that if oil leaks out of the wrecks, it could cause an environmental tragedy similar to that of 2019. At that time, Brazil was the scene of the largest oil spill ever recorded in developed waters. Around 5,000 tons of oil washed up in a total of eleven states. The cause is unknown.