[IFLScience] For more than six decades, the Boknis Eck marine observatory has taken oceanic measurements in the Baltic Sea — until recently. Last month, transmissions suddenly and unexpectedly stopped. Now, researchers are looking for clues after they dispatched divers to the seafloor only to find the remote sensors responsible for taking data measurements have been "forcibly removed"."On August 21 at 8.15pm it stopped the data transmission," said Boknis Eck coordinator Hermann Bange from GEOMAR in a statement, adding that at first his team suspected a "transmission error," but divers discovered a much more grim situation when they reached the seabed where the sensors were supposed to be.
"When the divers reached the bottom of the sea last week at the observatory's location, they found only the torn off land cable. It was completely shredded," said Bange.