Oct 14 - Its official; or at least officially positively confirmed after a handful of other investigations in the last ten years and the actual event, the sinking of U-864, on February 9, 1945 by the British near Fedje island, Norway. But Berlin, we have Mercury! At one time, 65 tonnes , or over 100,000 lbs of this stuff. Now its all gone; well not gone gone. From the sediment sampling done at and around this wreck, maybe dispersed is a better way of looking at it.
At the wreck site, the researchers performing this study collected a hot sample of over 24,00 mg/kg and a close second above 21,000 mg/kg in the area. That’s ppm, folks. 10,000 ppm is 1% mass, so in 1 kg of seafloor, 2.4% is mercury. That’s crazy. Up and down the coast, 4 miles in both directions, mercury was found at 1,000s of mg/kg which is 5-6 order of magnitudes above background.
Luckily little methylmercury was found, because that stuff bio-accumulates something fierce. They think that there isn't a bunch because of the very sandy floor devoid of biogenic life, so no sources of fixing the metallic mercury into the even more toxic form. Its definitely that and not that it has already been uptaked and walked away with over the years so that it is comingled with the region or even globe. They did measure the presence in crabs in the region which can be a sink of mercury, but i’m guessing we are a few generations removed from Norwegian grampa crabby who single-clawedly beat off the krauts.
So, once again, Hilter. Not only was he a monster, but he put the environment at risk. The mercury and other resources were being delivered to Japan on a supply run, when the British intercepted communique (Thanks, Alan Turing!) that U-864 would be in the area after leaving the port in Bergen. The British sub HMS Venturer located U-864 from a wobbly engine creating enough sound to seal the subs fate. It is the only known sinking of a sub between two fully submerged vessels. All 72 sailors on board including two high-ranking Japanese military scientists died. War is hell and worse, has effects that linger long after the fighting is done.