(CNN) An underwater laboratory disappeared one night last month, and scientists have no idea what happened.

The Boknis Eck Observatory might've been "forcibly removed" from a bay in Germany, the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel said . And with it went precious data about the state of the Baltic Sea.

Data transmission from the underwater sensors suddenly cut out one night in August, GEOMAR said. When divers went to investigate at the observatory site, they found nothing but a shredded cable that once anchored it.

One of the two components of the observatory, seen here, was installed in Germany's Eckernförde Bay in December 2016. Now it's disappeared without a trace.

The observatory, planted in Kiel's Eckernförde Bay in 2016, consists of two "desk-sized" racks: One acts as a power source, tethered to the coast by a cable, and the other contains the sensors that transmit data back to shore. Both were missing when divers went to investigate, GEOMAR researcher and marine biogeochemist Herman Bange said in a statement.

"The devices were gone," Bange said. "The divers could not find them anymore."

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