Sunken shells

A diving team from the Polish wreck hunter Baltictech has found a sunken 19th-century vessel with an intact cargo off the coast of southern Sweden’s Öland island. Team leader Tomasz Stachura described the 100 unopened bottles of champagne and mineral water in the shipwreck’s crates as being in good condition.

The water, sealed in clay bottles and bearing the German brand Selters, comes from a spring in the town of Selters and is believed to have been produced between 1850 and 1867.

Baltictech plans to retrieve the cargo, including porcelain, within a year, as it will plan how to do so in accordance with Swedish procedures and regulations.

Meanwhile, the Swiss military is also planning to retrieve weapons it dumped in the Thun, Brienz and Lucerne lakes between 1918 and 1964.

Since the defense procurement agency Armasuisse does not know how to safely retrieve the weapons, it has launched a contest to find the best method. It offered a cash prize of 50,000 Swiss francs for the best three entries. The competition is open until 6 February, with the winners scheduled to be announced in April, according to CNN.

The winning ideas will serve as the basis for recovering some 12,000 tons of old explosives, including those produced during World War I, that were sunk up to 220 meters deep in the lakes. The retrieval must not trigger the unremoved fuses of the munitions to prevent an explosion.

Due to Switzerland’s limited space and high-density population, it was considered a “safe” way to dispose of both excess and faulty ammunition stocks by putting them underwater, according to Al Jazeera. However, experts said the sunken munitions could be contaminating the water and soil around the lakes with their chemical ingredients, requiring their retrieval.