The shipwrecks of the wwi era in Mallows Bay Ecological sanctuary forms

The prosperous life on the “ghost fleet” of Maryland of the sinking era of the Second World War

By Andrea Tamayo Edited by Andrea Thompson

In 1929, the Western Marine & Salvage Company moved a fleet of 169 steam ships from the era of the First World War in Mallows Bay, a shallow entry into the Potomac river, where they were burned to make the materials recoverable easier to reach. Over time, some ships were buried under the sediments while others floated. Today, the skeletons of 147 ships – known as “ghost fleet of the mallows bay” – have transformed into an ecological oasis, reveal images of drones.

“I am sure that it was, in many ways, environmental catastrophic when it happened for the first time,” explains the marine conservation biologist, David Johnston, co-author of a new study describing the area published in Scientific data. “But life is so strong that it takes it and goes to its own.” Johnston and his colleagues found birds, such as the Balbuzards, nestled on wooden ruins, flourishing algae and providing nurseries for fish and trees that burst with engulfed ships.

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Any type of hard equipment attracts wildlife in water, explains Andrey Vedenine, a marine biologist at the Senckenberg Research Institute in Germany, who was not involved in the Mallows Bay study but co-written a new separate article which detailed the fauna that prosperous on the war detritus in the Baltic Sea. This research, published in Earth & Environment CommunicationsFound almost five times more individual life forms per square meter on munition objects than on nearby sediments.

“Wildlife will certainly come together in and around such structures. [They] Should provide a wide variety of niches with all complicated labyrinths inside the wrecks, “says Vedenin,” especially if the area is generally not available for humans and human activity, such as fishing. “”

The Potomac river flows through the bay of Chesapeake, which goes to the Atlantic Ocean. When high tides arrive, water brings silt in the bay. Then, as the tide turns off, the silt settles on the structures of the ship. Over the decades, the soil accumulates and the birds or small mammals place seeds. “It’s like this positive spiral, right?” Said Johnston. “You create a structure, the animals use it, and in doing so, they bring seeds of other plants, which then grow.”

When Johnston and his colleagues from the Duke University Marine Lab received funding from the National Science Foundation to build a drone center to study coastal ecosystems, they sought a new local coast to investigate. By looking for one on Google Earth, they came across a strange motif in the potomac. As they zoomed, dozens of shipwrecks appeared. They had found their place.

At the time, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources developed a proposal aimed at transforming Mallows Bay into a national marine sanctuary. The researchers had nailed the historical and cultural importance of the site, but needed more information on its ecological meaning. The Johnston Marine and remote sensing laboratory collected the data necessary in 2016, and Mallows Bay became a national marine sanctuary in 2019.

Johnston and the new study of his colleagues are based on this data, which has been taken with air drones. A drone focused on the cartography of the whole fleet, another traced on the individual wrecks and a third collection of detailed video sequences. The images were assembled together to create orthomosaics – high quality cards of ships.

“We are delighted to be able to map the wrecks using drones and that these efforts support the designation of the sea sanctuary – we had an impact!” Said Johnston. Thanks to this project, the team has established a reference base to study how ghost fleets react to the current effects of the elevation of sea level and the increase in storm, he adds, as well as “how each shipwreck evolves in terms of biodiversity and functioning of the ecosystem in the middle of a rapidly evolving world”.

The ecological study is one of the many comparable research projects undertaken in the sanctuary which, cumulatively, will provide data useful for all those interested in the region, said Susan Langley, who spent 31 years as an underwater scare from the Maryland State before his recent retirement.

Vedenin notes that there could be even more life below the surface. “The underwater close-ups would probably reveal a huge diversity of Epifauna [seafloor wildlife] Living on the remains of ships, “he adds.” It could be a future research idea if it has not yet been done. “”

Everything in the ocean is looking for an address – a place to be, says Johnston, echoing the advice he received from the late Dick Barber, longtime ocean biogeochemist, which was part of Johnston’s thesis committee. The physical structure of wrecks can give sea creatures that are aimed at what they are looking for, he adds.

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