ALKOR AL648

This cruise is covering the Baltic Sea from Germany to Lithuania, addresses the environmental threat of shipwrecks with their associated fuels and munitions. The proposed research cruise primarily serves the fieldwork needs of BALTWRECK, a EU funded South Baltic Interreg program that seeks to prevent pollution of the Baltic Sea by munitions, hazardous fuel, and other dangerous remains of shipwrecks by jointly developing, demonstrating, and implementing national wreck management programs. The BALTWRECK consortium includes Poland, German, Lithuania, and Sweden, and the proposed fieldwork spans across the first three of these countries. The proposed cruise is requested for late spring/early summer 2026, and links to additional fieldwork that is currently being planned by BALTWRECK project partners IOPAN (R/V Oceanograph; summer 2025) and IOW (R/V Elisabeth Mann Borghese; autumn 2026).

The ShIPPeR cruise focuses on six representative shipwrecks, two of each located in the EEZ of Germany, Poland, and Lithuania. Wrecks are chosen to target a range of different characteristics (e.g., age, condition, type of ship, type of contaminant) as far as possible, with the goal to include munitions and hazardous fuel oils. Work at these target sites has four overarching objectives:


# Geophysical characterization of the shipwrecks and the surrounding seafloor, including wreck condition and target objects laying outside the wreck body (e.g., munition objects).
# and application of eDNA metabarcoding approach for biodiversity assessment
# Collection of sediments and water for land-based experimentation and development of remediation techniques for explosive chemicals and fuel-related compounds.
# Promote international cooperation on shipwreck hazards in the South Baltic Region and support regional-scale solutions to border-transgressing pollution.