Clearance Activities for Marine Munition through Efficient Remediation Approaches (CAMMera) is a three-year Pilot Project funded by the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA) under its “Saving our Seas” 2024 call. While several initiatives have mapped and monitored underwater munitions, the final step—physically removing and disposing of them—remains the least developed. CAMMera takes on this challenge by designing and testing practical solutions: remotely operated and autonomous surface vehicles for clearance, tools for safe recovery of explosives, industrial concepts for disassembly and disposal, and surveys to verify that cleared sites are environmentally sound. Focusing on the Baltic Sea, CAMMera will produce best practices to ensure transferability to other European sea basins, and develop tested pathways to help governments and industry scale up remediation.
CAMMera aims to:
- Develop safe and remote-controlled technologies for clearing munitions dumpsites.
- Test recovery and disposal methods that minimise chemical releases.
- Create a secure surveillance system for clearance operations.
- Verify clearance through environmental monitoring and surveys.
- Build business cases and guidance that make large-scale remediation realistic across Europe.
Drawing on its experience in communication and dissemination, JPI Oceans supports CAMMera’s outreach through policy briefs, stakeholder workshops and targeted newsletters. It will also ensure that the project’s results are transferred into the developing Knowledge Portal Munitions in the Sea, which resulted from the work of JPI Oceans’ Knowledge Hub on the topic. By doing so, JPI Oceans will help connect project findings to European policy discussions and decision-making. Its role is therefore to provide a clear channel for knowledge transfer and to ensure that CAMMera’s outputs remain visible, usable, and relevant beyond the project’s lifetime. This will support the development of removal strategies for the North, Baltic and Black Seas, as mentioned in the European Ocean Pact.
Underwater munitions pose risks to security, maritime safety, and economic activities such as fisheries, offshore energy, shipping, and tourism. Marine munition dumpsites have also been demonstrated to leak toxic compounds such as TNT, DNT and RDX into surrounding sediments and water; these substances have been detected in marine organisms near dumpsites, raising additional concerns for ecosystem health and potential implications for food safety. CAMMera addresses the issue of munitions’ large-scale removal and disposal through safer, remote clearance methods, surveillance systems, and rapid environmental monitoring. By providing actionable guidance and a business case, CAMMera seeks to make remediation technically feasible and financially realistic across Europe.