Aside from causing tremendous damage to the German economy, the destruction of the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines last September also apparently did a number on the marine life in the Baltic Sea.
A new report produced by researchers from Germany, Poland and Denmark alleges that the explosions that took out the pipelines stirred up some 250,000 tonnes of “contaminated seabed,” resulting in the release of toxic substances that pose a threat to sea creatures, one Danish media outlet noted.
Hans Sanderson, a researcher at the Aarhus University’s Department of Environmental Science and one of the authors of the report, was quoted by the media outlet as saying that this situation could mean that fish exposed to those substances “will become ill.”
“There are some of them who will die, and there are some of them who will have difficulty reproducing,” he added.
The shockwave produced by the explosions also supposedly killed all porpoises within a four kilometer radius and likely deafened those within a 50 kilometer radius, the media outlet added.
Three of the four undersea natural gas pipelines comprising the Nord Stream 1 and 2 projects that connect Russia and Germany via the Baltic Sea were severely damaged by a series of powerful explosions in September 2022.
While it wasn’t immediately clear who was behind this act of sabotage, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh named the United States government as the mastermind in February.
Citing sources familiar with the planning of this operation, Hersh claimed that US navy divers planted the explosives on the pipelines in summer 2022 with assistance from Norway, and that the charges were detonated remotely three months later so as to avoid suspicion.