As the BBC website reports on September 5, an environmental and sea monitoring station has disappeared from the bottom of the Baltic coast of Germany. The underwater observatory, which has been operating on the seabed since December 2016, was operated by GEOMAR-Helmholtz Ocean Research Center and Geesthacht Center (HZG).
On August 21, 2019, at 8:15 p.m. local time, transmission from the € 300,000 ($ 330,000) station suddenly stopped. Divers were dispatched to the scene, according to GEOMAR, but much to their surprise, the entire structure was gone except for a broken data cable.
The missing observatory consists of two racks, one weighing 250 kg (550 lb) and the other 100 kg (220 lb) each. The racks include a frame holding the power supply (along with a thick cable connecting the station to the shore) and a frame for attaching the sensors. Both struts were "pulled out of their positions with great force," GEOMAR said in a statement.
The observatory was located at the exit of the Eckernförde Bay, north of Kiel and south of the Danish border. It was fixed at the bottom at a distance of 1.8 kilometers (1.1 miles) from the coast, at a depth of 22 meters (72 feet).
“At first we thought about a transmission error,” says Hermann Bange, project coordinator of the Boknis Eck Observatory, in a GEOMAR statement. This prompted the project management to send a dive mission to the scene, but…. “The devices were gone, the divers could no longer find them. When the divers reached the bottom of the sea at the location of the observatory, they found only a severed ground cable. And everything was torn to pieces and crushed there,”Hermann Bange continues his explanation.
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Factors such as a strong storm, strong currents or even marine animals are completely excluded as potential causes due to the design of the station, which is designed to be influenced by such factors. Thus, the station was either abducted by aliens, or the station was stolen by a certain group of people - this is the only plausible explanation.
But an even more difficult question arises, the question - who were these aliens / bad people, because:
a) The observatory was located in a restricted area off the northern coast of Germany. No floating equipment, including fishing vessels, is permitted in the area.
b) As GEOMAR employees explained to GIZMODO, the disappearance of the station is reminiscent of stories about sunken warships that also disappear from the bottom of the ocean. In these cases, robbers are suspected of hunting for weapons, artifacts or dismantling ships for scrap. Perhaps something similar happened, but, due to the small weight of the station, its theft for metal is unprofitable, and the equipment itself is of no value to looters.
Thus, who stole the science station and why is a complete mystery. German police have been alerted to the incident and are currently investigating, but GEOMAR reports that the station's scientific data set is actually invaluable.
The station collected data on water temperature, nutrients, salinity, water flow rate, and chlorophyll and methane concentrations to assess the state of the ecosystem in and around the southwestern Baltic Sea. By tracking these changes, scientists can be alerted to potential problems and take the necessary countermeasures.
GEOMAR and HZA conducted their own search for the missing station, but to no avail. Scientists are now asking for help from the public, asking anyone who knows anything about the incident to report.
So far, the most logical version assumes that the disappearance of the station is the result of a heinous military operation conducted by an unknown state, but at the moment there is no evidence and all this may be speculation. Hopefully the mysterious disappearance of the station will be explained in the coming days or weeks.