In June, representatives of Baltictech took part in a meeting of the Parliamentary Group dedicated to regulations governing wreck diving. The meeting was held at the Polish Senate, initiated by Senator Kazimierz Kleina with the active involvement of our diving community.
The meeting brought together Minister Bożena Żelazowska, Senators Magdalena Kochan and Kazimierz Kleina, representatives of the Ministries of Infrastructure and Culture, the Maritime Offices in Gdynia and Szczecin, the National Maritime Museum in Gdańsk, the Diving Museum, the Museum of Polish Arms, as well as a nine-member Baltictech diving team.
During the two-hour discussion, participants reviewed the current regulations, compared them with solutions used in other countries, and discussed possible new rules for accessing wrecks in the Baltic Sea.
Baltictech strongly supports a significant liberalisation of the current regulations, while maintaining effective protection of underwater cultural heritage. We believe that the existing system often limits legal diving activity without providing sufficiently effective protection for the wrecks themselves.
Our proposed approach is based on three simple principles:
Everything that is not prohibited is allowed – diving should be permitted on all wrecks that are not explicitly restricted.
Access to protected wrecks under supervision – diving on selected restricted wrecks could be possible under the supervision of a licensed guide.
“Look, don’t touch” – wrecks must remain intact, and removing any objects from them should be prohibited.
The meeting showed that there is a real opportunity to develop new solutions through cooperation between public authorities, cultural heritage institutions and the diving community.
Baltictech’s next step will be to prepare a proposal for a new regulatory framework, drawing on solutions used in Scandinavian countries and Malta. Our goal is to create regulations that effectively protect Baltic wrecks while allowing divers to explore them legally and responsibly.
This could be the beginning of an important change for wreck diving in the Polish Baltic Sea.
