Service: Clearance of dumped war ammunition in the North Sea

On the sandbank De Paardenmarkt , located in the North Sea about 1.5 kilometers from the coast of Knokke, there are an estimated 35,000 tons of dumped ammunition (mainly) from WWI. It concerns both conventional and chemical ammunition. To date, there is no danger to the marine environment or public health, but there is an ongoing risk of the (chemical) munitions rusting through or tearing through (due to ship strikes), resulting in heavy (chemical) pollution. Moreover, the ammunition dump at De Paardenmarkt may in the future be an obstacle to coastal safety in general and to further developments around the port of Zeebrugge in particular. The Maritime Access department of the Department of Mobility and Public Works (MOW) of the Flemish government therefore wants to have a test carried out in the context of this PIO project that should demonstrate how this ammunition dump could be done safely and in a time and cost-effective way be cleaned up. The following topics are covered: precision detection of the position of the ammunition, continuous monitoring of the environment, removal of the overlying sediments, deepening of the ammunition and safe transport to the mainland with robot technology. The aim of the test is to locate a piece (or unit ) of ammunition a few meters below the seabed as precisely as possible within the larger ammunition dump and, regardless of the type or condition of the piece, to dig it up and bring it ashore (further disposal / processing of the collected ammunition is not part of the test). For this, the necessary survey systems and robot technology will have to be developed and / or tested that make it possible to reduce the risks to humans and the marine environment to a minimum. If successful, the tested solutions can be purchased and deployed for a full-scale clean-up operation.