Ocean Calls Podcast – Season 3 Ep. 1: Unexploded Bombs in the Black Sea and the Baltic

The Ocean Calls Podcast is back!

This third season, we’ll talk about the environmental catastrophe in the Black Sea, help you trace where your seafood comes from, and explore how AI can offer insights into everything from the pathways of plastic pollution to the lives of teenage turtles.

We will also have some touching, personal tales from ocean lovers like Sex Education star Chris Jenks and fresh-fish-obsessed Dutch chef Bart Van Olphen. Stay with us as we debate with experts, break down the science, and explain EU policies and action.

For now, we start off the season with an episode on unexploded ammunition.

Called "ticking time bombs," millions of tonnes of unexploded munitions and other relics of WWII lie at the bottom of all our European seas. In an attempt to demilitarise Europe, around 40,000 tonnes of chemical weapons were dumped into the Baltic Sea alone, according to HELCOM.

Today, Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine is threatening the Black Sea once again, exacerbating an already complicated situation.

In this episode of Ocean Calls, Euronews science reporter Jeremy Wilks and his guests will discuss the complicated legacy of WWII and explore whether we can help save the Black Sea or at least make future clean-up efforts a bit easier to manage.

At the end of the episode, you’ll hear a mysterious tale of the oldest and best-preserved shipwreck ever found, thanks to the unique properties of the Black Sea.

Learn more about our guests:

• Jens Greinert, head of the Deep Sea Monitoring Research Unit at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel
• Markus Helavuori, professional secretary at the Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission (HELCOM)
• Mikhail Son, deputy director of the Institute of Marine Biology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
• Viktor Komorin, head of the Ukrainian Scientific Centre for Marine Ecology
• Rodrigo Pacheco-Ruiz, marine archaeologist at The National Museum of the Royal Navy and The Black Sea MAP project

Listen to it in full on Euronews website.