Car-sized research station stolen from ocean floor

The cable - all that remains.
The cable - all that remains. Photo credit: Forschungstauchzentraum

When an undersea environmental monitoring system off the coast of Germany stopped sending data last month, scientists suspected equipment failure.

But divers sent down to the bottom of the Baltic Sea found a much bigger problem - the car-sized station was gone. All that was left was a torn cable, BBC News reports.

The station, installed in 2016, weighs 770kg and cost €300,000. The area it sits in is prohibited - no boats are allowed at all, and experts at German research facility Geomar said it could not possibly have been removed by animals, storms or tides. 

"The data we get from it is priceless," head of oceanographic research Hermann Bange told BBC News.

The station measured temperatures and nutrient levels.

German police are investigating, on the assumption it was stolen. 

Newshub.