The Baltic wrecks around Öland and Gotland are simply a true paradise for divers. For centuries this has been a busy shipping route, and over the years sailing ships went down here, followed later by large steel ships and warships during World War I and II. Because of the distance from shore and the considerable depths, very few people dive here—making the wrecks almost untouched.
We had explored the wrecks around Öland many times before, but Gotland had always been either too far away or the weather was against us. This time everything worked out perfectly: in mid-August a small group of us—Tomasz Stachura, Maciej Honc, Bartłomiej Pitala, and Tomasz Wciórka—set off from Łeba towards the northern Baltic. Sometimes we spent the night at sea so we could reach distant positions early in the morning, and sometimes we squeezed into tiny Swedish harbors. From the very start, the weather was on our side, and we could finally check off wrecks from our “to explore” list every single day.
Over eight days, we had the chance to dive stunning old wooden wrecks and unique historic steamships lying between 40 and 103 meters deep. The deepest wreck was the one we were most eager to see—we hoped it would turn out to be something truly extraordinary. On the seabed, it turned out to be an old wooden vessel—possibly as much as 500 years old—but apart from a massive tiller and rudder blade, nothing really captured our imagination.
The steamships, on the other hand, were beautifully preserved and truly worth exploring. Luckily, we still have a few more entries left on our list, so there’s every reason to come back.
In this region, almost nobody organizes dive trips, and we are now seriously considering running a few commercial expeditions here next year. Let us know if a group would be interested in joining such unique—but also demanding—dives!
