Scuba Dive

The Swedish "Vasa," reclaimed from the Baltic Sea after 300 years as an underwater wreck

Wreck diving aficionados beware: the Baltic Sea might just make you addicted to high adrenaline scuba.  Experts estimate that over 50,000 wrecks lie at the bottom of this little-dived body of water located between the main European continent and Scandinavia.  Centuries old shipwrecks dating from medieval times to the world wards have been found, with tens of thousands more just waiting to be discovered.  Best of all, the ships are very well preserved because of the water’s low salinity and the fact that ship worms that eat wooden wrecks don’t live there.   The result is sea floor crafts in pristine condition for divers. 

Have you ever dove a wreck and thought “Nice boat, but I have no idea what I am actually looking at.”  Instead of just diving a no-name sunken ship, isn’t it so much sexier to dive Peter the Great’s warship, the “Portsmouth?”  Frequently, the story behind the boat and the details themselves make the dive even more exciting.  The high quality of the Baltic Sea wrecks and their artifacts frequently enable researchers to determine the origin and time period of the ship, if not identify the specific ship itself.  So, would you prefer to dive “joe’s tug” or, alternatively, the “Oleg,” a cruiser built in St. Petersburg in 1901-1903 that was sunk by an English torpedo on July 8, 1919?  The appeal of diving Baltic Sea wrecks is undeniable.

But make no mistake; wreck diving in the Baltic Sea is not a beginner’s pursuit.  Strong currents and bone-chilling thermoclines can make the venture unpleasant at best.  Though plenty of wrecks lie along the coasts, many are below recreational dive limits and require decompression diving.  And the sad truth is that climate change is causing Baltic Sea temperatures to rise, which in turn is enabling the ship worm to start inching into formerly uninfected Baltic waters along the German and Swedish coasts. 

But for a diver with a penchant for wrecks, the Baltic Sea is not to be missed.  About a year ago, a team of archeologists carried out the “Secrets of the Sunken Ship” project, identifying 30 more Baltic wrecks of historical importance such as a Li-2 aircraft belonging to the First Long Range Aviation Division Guard downed in 1944, the German boat the “Frida Horn,” and the Swedish “Hanhoot,” built in 1892.  Their findings add to the existing list of known wrecks, and more are continuously being added.  The Baltic is so rich with wrecks, sometimes discoveries are almost comical.  A gas company building an underwater pipeline between Germany and Russia had to repeatedly stop their progress as they unearthed no less than 12 wrecks, some dating back 800 years.