The Stinking Baltic coast

I just had a chat with Piret Johanson, an informant at the Estonian Environmental Inspectorate. She told me about the difficult conditions in the Baltic Sea. This is what I learned:

The Baltic is a dangerously unhealthy sea. Many years of careless Soviet pollution have taken their toll, much as they did on the Black sea.

"Estonia is a young country, and in Soviet times all the farm water, industrial water and sewage was directed into the sea without cleaning it first," Piret says.

"There are still some problems with cleaning the water first. Some places don't have enough money to change the system or they dont care to."

The casual spilling of oil and industrial waste into the water is now under control, but years of damage will take years to recover from.

On the Estonian coast the pollution manifests itself as piles of stinking black seaweed, washed up and rotting after being starved of oxygen on the seabed. In summer vast blankets of blue algae spread along beaches and out to sea making swimming impossible, causing rashes among those foolish enough to try. Even the fish are now moderately poisonous.

These are all symptoms of widespread pollution and hypoxia - areas where oxygen in the water is consumed by rotting plant matter. (Read more about hypoxia and ocean dead zones.)

Geographically the Baltic has a problem with water exchange, being an enclosed and relatively still sea. The building of dykes and roads between the costal islands only exacerbates this problem.

Into this still water runs all the fertiliser enriched runoff of half a continent, nitrates carried from the fields to the sea by rainwater, and there causing excessive growth of unwelcome algae.

"When my mother was young she could swim in the sea near our home, but now it's impossible to swim near the dyke," Piret explains.

The good news is that the problem is understood, and the EU and Environmental Inspectorate are working hard to make changes. Scandinavian and Baltic nations work together closely to protect and preserve the Baltic.

It is a process of regulation and education, teaching farmers how to clean their water, and ensuring ships don't dump their waste into the ocean. Silage management on land is affecting the future of a sea. Investment in this area is worthwhile if it serves to protect the fishing industry, not to mention the huge stretches of beautiful coastline on the edge of environmental collapse.