The environmental bomb of having thousands of ships full of fuel oil sunk in the oceans

As time goes by, abandoned hooves suffer constant degradation. Steel corrodes, seals become leak-tight, and residual fuels and machine oils leach into the water.

In December 1918, the ship HMS Cassandra, a British light cruiser built during World War I, sank after colliding with a naval mine in the Baltic Sea, near the island of Saaremaa (Estonia). 11 crew members died in the shipwreck. The wreck, as the remains of a sunken ship are called, was found 92 years later, in 2010, at a depth of 100 meters. It was found by a marine expedition from the British Ministry of Defence’s Wreck Management Programme. The scientists detected small fuel leaks, a pollution that as a result of climate change – increase in the temperature of the oceans and the change in the acidity of the water – could accelerate in the coming decades.

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