video created as part of the KPO for Culture grant in 2024.
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I would like to thank Katarzyna Dragańska-Deja and Kajetan Deja from the Institute of Oceanology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Sopot, as well as Jola Woszczenko from CSW Łaźnia, for their consultations.
I would also like to thank Zuzia Krajewska for her hydrological stories by the Bay.

2024

1. The Little Sea – this is what the Kashubians call Puck Bay, the western part of the Bay of Gdańsk between the Hel Peninsula and the coast. Recently, I have been spending as much time there as I could. By the water and on the water, and more recently, on windless days, also looking beneath the surface.
This part of the Bay underwent a deep ecological collapse in the 1960s and 1970s, caused by pollution and, to a lesser extent, by bottom trawling for the extraction of Furcellaria fastigiata for agar. However, the condition of the Bay has been improving since the 1990s, and plants and animals have been slowly returning. From 2004 onwards, algae also began to be included on the list of protected species in Poland – among them Furcellaria fastigiata and bladderwrack, both almost completely wiped out in Puck Bay.
Life in the Bay is returning, but we continue to harm it – not only through fertilisers flowing in from the fields, not only through insufficiently treated sewage, not only through still overly regulated shorelines, but also through motorised water sports in shallow water. The force of the water jet tears up the returning underwater meadows and deprives the animals living there of shelter. And wind sports are a hundred times better anyway.

 

2. The inner part of Puck Bay, known as the Puck Lagoon, and once referred to as Puck Bay proper, is separated by a shoal. It is a highly distinctive ecosystem and the most biodiverse part of the Polish Baltic. The water is brackish, so organisms from both freshwater and marine environments live here. Its average depth is just over 3 metres, which is not much – sunlight often reaches the bottom in large quantities, something exceptional in a marine basin. And because the water is relatively shallow, it cools down and warms up quickly – the species living here must therefore have a high tolerance for temperature changes. This is also where we have the greatest chance of seeing sea ice.
The bottom of the Bay used to be covered with seagrass meadows – eelgrass, stonewort, and pondweed. In the 1960s and 1970s, they were largely destroyed by pollution and direct human activity, while Furcellaria fastigiata and bladderwrack disappeared. At the end of the last century, the shoreline was intensively regulated and the reed beds were destroyed. Along with the meadows and reed beds, the populations of animals living and breeding there – shrimp and fish – were drastically reduced or collapsed altogether.
Eelgrass meadows are returning, and the reed beds are also being restored. Wastewater treatment has greatly improved water quality. Together with the plants and the habitats they create, animals are returning as well. There are also sticklebacks, which appeared in place of fish species that had disappeared earlier.

 

3. Moon jellyfish – Aurelia aurita – in Polish chełbia modra. It is hard to imagine a better name for such a beautiful phenomenon. These jellyfish are not harmed by the climate catastrophe – they like warm water and arrive with it in uncountable numbers. Sometimes, stopping somewhere out on the Bay, one can admire thousands of jellyfish drifting through the black water. What could harm them is pollution or the collapse of the food chain.
They do not sting humans, although like all jellyfish they are equipped with stinging cells. They are made up of more than ninety percent – only slightly less than one hundred percent – water. At the end of their life cycle, they die on Baltic beaches. The greatest numbers can be found on the side of the warm Bay.
I do not fully believe in interspecies collaboration in this case – collaboration requires a conscious and consensual reciprocity. But I greatly value the possibility of observing their existence, of looking at them and through them, of trying to tune my perception to their pulse. At times, it resembles the rhythm of breathing or of a transparent heart.

 

4. The invisible fish – the semi-transparent sand goby. This year, it was enough to step into the shallow waters of the Bay and they would swim up. They rested on the bottom, often close to one another, moving slightly under the influence of almost imperceptible waves. They came in small groups, and within moments there was an uncountable shoal of them. I do not know what the human body might offer them – perhaps it is simply still warmer than the heated waters of the Bay. Perhaps it gives hope of some form of food. Perhaps it is large, whitish, clumsy, and unfamiliar with water, which makes it some kind of attraction in the repetitive days underwater. Perhaps it reflects the refractions of sunlight in an irresistibly intense way. Or perhaps, through the water, they can hear the beating of our hearts.
In Poland, the sand goby used to be under strict species protection; since 2014 it has been under partial protection. It lives in mud and sand and is especially fond of brackish waters – fresh river water mixed with salty seawater.
Underwater, without goggles, very little can be seen – perhaps only as much of a human as the invisible fish can see. But you can feel the tickling. In May, sticklebacks were nibbling at me; now they were invisible tickles.

 

5. Water is associated with calm, with silence. With rustling, bubbling, the soothing sound of waves. Sound travels through water four times faster than through air, but we do not hear it.
Acoustic pollution in the Baltic Sea and the Bay of Gdańsk is enormous. It is this noise that drives harbour porpoises away and prevents them from communicating, orienting themselves through echolocation, and, as a consequence, from reproducing and living. The main sources of noise are ships, but also offshore wind farms. The worst are detonations and drilling connected with the construction of wind farms or platforms. But every passing ship is extremely loud, as loud as a jet taking off. The Baltic Sea is considered one of the most crowded seas in the world, with 15% of global maritime transport taking place there. The noisiest area is the narrow Danish Straits, while the quietest – outside the tourist season – is Puck Bay. Hel forms a natural acoustic barrier and protects this ecosystem. So it is tourists, boat engines, and jet skis that make the noise here. (after: Guidelines for Minimising Underwater Noise as a Significant Threat to the Harbour Porpoise Phocoena phocoena in the Baltic Sea by Wojciech Górski, Radomił Koza, Dr Iwona Pawliczka vel Pawlik, WWF Poland Foundation, 2019; thanks to Magdalena Sołodyna and Shadows of the Anthropocene for the inspiration)