Busier Baltic Sea struggles with pollution, safety

But by far the most serious problems are sewage, animal wastes, and fertilizer-laden runoff carried to the sea by streams and rivers. The quantity of the two basic nutrients in these effluents - nitrogen and phosphorus - have increased by eight- and four-fold respectively over the past century, according to Mr. Andrusaitis.

As in other bays and seas around the world, the excess nutrients have triggered enormous algae blooms in the Baltic. Some become so large that they outpace the ability of fish and other marine creatures to graze them down. As a result, layer upon layer of dead algae pile up on the ocean bottom where they decompose, using up much or all of the dissolved oxygen in the surrounding sea water and creating "dead zones" where no animal life can live.

Along the western shore of Tallinn harbor, thick mats of rotting algae cover rocks and beaches, filling the air with a vile odor. Out at sea the problem is hidden, but has more serious ecological implications.

The dead zones are making it more difficult for cod to recover from serious overfishing. Over the past two decades, the Baltic cod catch has fallen by three-quarters, while the adult population has fallen by seven-eighths. That means far fewer cod eggs are being laid each year, and many of those that are wind up suffocating in the dead zones, which are most prevalent in the deep basins the cod use for nurseries here.

"In some years there is a total failure of cod reproduction," Andrusaitis says. WWF International estimates that cod fishermen in the Baltic are losing at least $186 million a year compared to what the group says could have been earned if sustainable fishing policies had been in place since 1977.

But Vadim Paka, director of the Shirshov Institute of Oceanography in the Russian port of Kaliningrad, was in Tallinn to warn of another danger hidden on the floor of the Baltic: a large trove of chemical weapons lost at the end of World War II when an allied convoy hit rough seas.

Mr. Paka says some 60,000 tons of chemical weapons including mustard gas and arsenic lie at three locations in the Baltic, with the largest off western Sweden. While the weapons don't appear to have caused any damage to date, Paka is concerned that may change as the munitions they are contained in corrode away. He's been traveling around Europe, trying to gather support for a $1 million monitoring program that would assess the threat.

"The most dangerous thing is that nobody knows what is going on there," he says.

Those concerned about increased oil-tanker traffic are also looking for money to start a monitoring program, this one to detect spills and determine their ship of origin. "Every year we have more and more [minor] spills," says Eugeniusz Andrulewicz of the Sea Fisheries Institute in Gdynia, Poland. "We need a very good system so we can catch the violators and protect the Baltic."

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