VEJLE: To assist repair the site’s devastated ecosystem, volunteers and researchers prepare slender green shoots of eelgrass to be planted on the seabed beneath a white tent on the banks of a filthy Danish fjord.
Although Denmark has a good history of handling environmental challenges, the Danish Environmental Agency states that only five of the country’s 109 coastline zones are deemed healthy.
The Vejle fjord, like other Danish coastal areas, is experiencing eutrophication, a condition where nutrients—often from land runoff—accumulate in a body of water and cause an increase in the proliferation of microorganisms and algae.
The algae that blanket the water’s surface smothers plants and wildlife by obstructing light and oxygen. The municipality placed an underwater monitoring camera in the Vejle fjord last year, and in seventy hours, it saw just one fish.
Denmark, a major pig producer, has one of the largest concentrations of agricultural land worldwide, with over 60% of its land dedicated to the industry. This has led to numerous warnings on the risk of run-off in recent years.
The 22-kilometer Vejle fjord was found to be in “poor environmental condition” in a 2022 assessment by the University of Southern Denmark (USD) due to high amounts of nitrogen run-off from agriculture fertilizer use. Furthermore, the issue gets worse as the mercury increases.
“We had an extremely warm summer in 2023, and that led to a significant oxygen depletion,” Vejle municipality biologist Mads Fjeldsoe Christensen stated.
