Ideell Förening Sverige
Org. No. 802551-3832
Frivillig Forening Danmark
CVR No. 46190815
Org. No. 802551-3832
Frivillig Forening Danmark
CVR No. 46190815
An open letter on why Öresund Patrol exists.
by Lukasz LARSSON WARZECHA
OP's Managing Director
OP's Managing Director
Öresund is usually described as the body of water that divides Sweden and Denmark. I'm writing these words to convince you that we should start looking at it the other way around. I'd like to see Öresund as a connection between Sweden and Denmark. The Sound is what holds us together. Not a border. A bond.
That is the reason Öresund Patrol exists.
I have spent twenty years telling stories from places most will never visit. In the early 2020s, when I moved to Skåne, the borders were closed, and many Swedes were discovering nature's beauty on their doorsteps, sometimes for the first time, just as I was. I came to this part of the world because my wife, Ulrika, grew up here. At the time, I was spending most of my time in the waters around the Kullaberg Peninsula, diving almost daily. What surprised me most during this time was not what I found underwater, but that most of the Swedes I was diving with were surprised by the beauty beneath the surface. In the late summer evenings of the pandemic era, Ulrika filled in the rest, during dinners and long conversations at the kitchen table: the 1980s collapse, the partial recovery, what was lost and what came back. It is a story I have been fascinated by ever since, and one that I felt needed to be told.
In the 1980s, the Sound was choked with increased nutrients, algal blooms, oxygen-starved bottoms, and toxic compounds in sediments and tissues. Surprisingly again, the partial recovery of the ecosystem happened almost by accident. A 1932 ban on bottom trawling, introduced primarily as a shipping-safety measure for one of the busiest waterways on the planet, eventually became one of the most consequential accidental marine conservation measures in northern Europe.
The Sound holds one of the largest mussel beds on the continent, covering around 75 square kilometres. It is a year-round home for the harbour porpoise, one of the few places
That is the reason Öresund Patrol exists.
I have spent twenty years telling stories from places most will never visit. In the early 2020s, when I moved to Skåne, the borders were closed, and many Swedes were discovering nature's beauty on their doorsteps, sometimes for the first time, just as I was. I came to this part of the world because my wife, Ulrika, grew up here. At the time, I was spending most of my time in the waters around the Kullaberg Peninsula, diving almost daily. What surprised me most during this time was not what I found underwater, but that most of the Swedes I was diving with were surprised by the beauty beneath the surface. In the late summer evenings of the pandemic era, Ulrika filled in the rest, during dinners and long conversations at the kitchen table: the 1980s collapse, the partial recovery, what was lost and what came back. It is a story I have been fascinated by ever since, and one that I felt needed to be told.
In the 1980s, the Sound was choked with increased nutrients, algal blooms, oxygen-starved bottoms, and toxic compounds in sediments and tissues. Surprisingly again, the partial recovery of the ecosystem happened almost by accident. A 1932 ban on bottom trawling, introduced primarily as a shipping-safety measure for one of the busiest waterways on the planet, eventually became one of the most consequential accidental marine conservation measures in northern Europe.
The Sound holds one of the largest mussel beds on the continent, covering around 75 square kilometres. It is a year-round home for the harbour porpoise, one of the few places
in the wider Baltic region, where the species has not retreated, yet. Bluefin tuna, absent for decades, returned in 2016. Seagrass meadows, which rank among the most efficient natural carbon sinks on earth, grow quietly along both shores.
Imagine if, one day, every resident of Malmö, Copenhagen, Helsingborg and Helsingør looked out across the water and understood what a healthy Sound brings to the region. That knowledge gap, between what the Strait is and what people imagine it to be, is the thing policy alone cannot close.
Öresund is not unprotected. But its protection is patchy and insufficient. There are intergovernmental and municipal bodies coordinating water monitoring along the Danish and Swedish coasts, the longest-running of which is Öresundsvattensamarbetet, a collaboration between municipalities on both sides. Each country has its own environmental agencies, universities, and long-term research programmes. The institutional architecture is real, and it does serious work.
Meaningful change around any problem requires three things: knowing there is a problem, caring that it matters, and acting to fix it. Knowing and acting without caring is
how powerful interest groups push agendas that serve only themselves. Caring and acting without knowing is activism that pulls on the emotional strings but preaches to the proverbial choir. And knowing and caring without a path to action is the quiet hopelessness that so many informed, concerned people feel. It is a closed loop. In a broader sense, it is where climate anxiety comes from. There is no shortage of people around Öresund who know something is wrong, or who care deeply about the water they grew up beside. What is missing is the path from knowing and caring to doing.
Öresund Patrol is a Swedish-Danish nonprofit with a 50/50 cross-border crew, by design.
We were set up to do three things while connecting and working alongside the existing organisations on both sides.
Imagine if, one day, every resident of Malmö, Copenhagen, Helsingborg and Helsingør looked out across the water and understood what a healthy Sound brings to the region. That knowledge gap, between what the Strait is and what people imagine it to be, is the thing policy alone cannot close.
Öresund is not unprotected. But its protection is patchy and insufficient. There are intergovernmental and municipal bodies coordinating water monitoring along the Danish and Swedish coasts, the longest-running of which is Öresundsvattensamarbetet, a collaboration between municipalities on both sides. Each country has its own environmental agencies, universities, and long-term research programmes. The institutional architecture is real, and it does serious work.
Meaningful change around any problem requires three things: knowing there is a problem, caring that it matters, and acting to fix it. Knowing and acting without caring is
how powerful interest groups push agendas that serve only themselves. Caring and acting without knowing is activism that pulls on the emotional strings but preaches to the proverbial choir. And knowing and caring without a path to action is the quiet hopelessness that so many informed, concerned people feel. It is a closed loop. In a broader sense, it is where climate anxiety comes from. There is no shortage of people around Öresund who know something is wrong, or who care deeply about the water they grew up beside. What is missing is the path from knowing and caring to doing.
Öresund Patrol is a Swedish-Danish nonprofit with a 50/50 cross-border crew, by design.
We were set up to do three things while connecting and working alongside the existing organisations on both sides.
Independent, marine research
The first is independent, marine research projects run in a citizen-science capacity. Together with Lund University, DTU Aqua, and ETH Zurich (through the WildinSync initiative), we are building our first flagship project, a long-term, across-the-Sound biodiversity survey based on environmental DNA (eDNA), beginning with a pilot this summer and aiming for 10 years of seasonal sampling. eDNA detects what conventional biodiversity surveys miss, since every organism in the water constantly sheds traces of itself: skin cells, mucus, scales. A single water sample can reveal the presence of species difficult to observe. This method also builds a multi-year baseline against which actual change can be measured. Without one, something dangerous happens: each new generation of scientists, managers and policymakers inherits a poorer ecosystem than the one before, but because they never saw the earlier version, they treat what they find as the starting point.
Biologists call this shifting baselines. It matters here more than almost anywhere, because the Sound's partial recovery has created a perception of a "healthy" body of water that may already be masking longer-term decline. As the oceans around the planet absorb more heat due to global warming, connecting the Sound to a worldwide open-access database matters for planning not only locally but globally.
Biologists call this shifting baselines. It matters here more than almost anywhere, because the Sound's partial recovery has created a perception of a "healthy" body of water that may already be masking longer-term decline. As the oceans around the planet absorb more heat due to global warming, connecting the Sound to a worldwide open-access database matters for planning not only locally but globally.
Ocean literacy
The second is ocean literacy for the nearly four million people who live along the Sound's shores. 99.9% of the world's population has never been underwater. Most people around Öresund never will be. So we bring the water to them. We want to tell its stories through film, photography, school visits, harbour-front events and immersive exhibitions. The goal is to connect the ocean with 1% of the population around the Sound every year, face-to- face, where we can. Do that for ten years, and you have changed who is in the room when the next decision is made.
Advocacy
The third is advocacy. The Sound should be managed as one body of water. That sounds obvious, but it is not how things work today. Two countries, two sets of priorities. It will stay that way unless someone keeps making the case for treating the Sound as a whole.
We are not opposed to development. The Sound is one of the world's busiest shipping lanes, its shores are home to the most densely populated metropolitan areas in the Nordics, and it is a working seascape where more than 70 ferries cross every day. Any honest plan for its future has to consider those facts alongside the future and well-being of the entire ecosystem.
We are not a substitute for institutions, nor are we in competition with them. Our advisory board draws from Lund University, DTU Aqua, Helsingborgs Stad, and Visit Skåne, as well as researchers from both countries. Our project partners include Länsstyrelsen Skåne, ETH Zurich, the University of Bergen, the CLEAN cluster, and Køge Bugt Stenrev.
Öresund is worth protecting. Not because it is pristine, because it is not. Not because it is in crisis; the picture is more complicated than that.
We are not a substitute for institutions, nor are we in competition with them. Our advisory board draws from Lund University, DTU Aqua, Helsingborgs Stad, and Visit Skåne, as well as researchers from both countries. Our project partners include Länsstyrelsen Skåne, ETH Zurich, the University of Bergen, the CLEAN cluster, and Køge Bugt Stenrev.
Öresund is worth protecting. Not because it is pristine, because it is not. Not because it is in crisis; the picture is more complicated than that.
It is worth protecting because nearly four million people who share a language of stewardship, democratic trust and care for the natural world live alongside a partially recovered, uniquely productive and deeply fragile marine habitat. Together, they face a choice about what kind of legacy they want to leave.
The health of the Sound cannot be solved by one country. It depends on shared science, shared action and shared responsibility. That is not a slogan. It is the operational fact of any body of water artificially divided by a national border.
Öresund Patrol is one answer to that fact. Not the only one, and not the loudest. But the one we are positioned to build, and the one we have started building.
The health of the Sound cannot be solved by one country. It depends on shared science, shared action and shared responsibility. That is not a slogan. It is the operational fact of any body of water artificially divided by a national border.
Öresund Patrol is one answer to that fact. Not the only one, and not the loudest. But the one we are positioned to build, and the one we have started building.
Lukasz Larsson Warzecha is the Co-Founder, Chief Storyteller, and Managing Director of Öresund Patrol.
He is a National Geographic contributing photographer based in northern Skåne.