The Swedish dive equipment manufacturer Poseidon Diving Group has been acquired by Argo Defence Group, marking a significant new chapter for one of the diving industry’s most innovative and long-standing brands.
Väderöarna (the Weather Islands) is an archipelago on the west coast of Sweden, which offers a rich underwater landscape bursting with vivid colours and marine life. Local underwater photographer Stefan Beskow gives us the inside scoop on this superb dive location.
The Baltic Sea offers some very treacherous waters even under the best of circumstances. The price to pay for sailing the Baltic through the millenniums has been high, and traces of those costs are scattered over the bottom.
In 1625, Sweden’s King Gustav II Adolf ordered four ships—large regal ships—to crown the fleet. The four ships were Vasa, Äpplet, Scepter and Svärdet.
The Baltictech diving team found the shipwreck, estimated to be around 175 years old, about 58 meters (190 feet) deep off the Swedish coast. Among the relics, divers discovered over 100 bottles of champagne, astonishingly well-preserved in the cold, dark waters of the Baltic.
While the ship was found around 20 nautical miles (37km) south of the Swedish island of Öland, however, it’s not clear where it was heading to. The team believes the ship was en route to Russia, where the aristocracy prized champagne.
In a pivotal legal decision, the Court of Appeal in Sweden has revised the sentences of four men convicted in 2022 for offences against Sweden's heritage laws. These individuals were found guilty of plundering several wrecks off the coast of Öland, challenging the preservation of national heritage.
From 2013 to 2020, the convicted men retrieved a multitude of artefacts from shipwrecks near Öland, using some to adorn their homes. Dive logbook entries suggest that their activities may have begun as early as 1987.
Sweden's military has now analyzed the video footage provided by Swedish wreckhunter group Ocean X Team and concluded that it is the wreck of a Russian submarine that sank after a collision with a Swedish vessel in 1916 during the First World War. Ocean X was the team who also found the "Baltic anomali"
The desire for adventure lies in wait and entices us… On Utö, there was an unexplored mine system. Follow Anders Etander down into the darkness, where the “In Water Under Land” exploration group had the privilege of diving in a place that has been untouched for 150 years.
Launched in 1629, Applet (Apple) was built by the same shipbuilder as the famed 69-metre Vasa, which was carrying 64 cannons when it went down in a strait off the island of Vaxholm, just outside the capital, Stockholm. Vasa was meant to serve as a symbol of Sweden’s military might at the time but capsized after sailing just over 1,000 metres. It was salvaged in 1961 and is on display at the Vasa Museum in Stockholm, one of Sweden’s most popular tourist spots.
Interview and text by Mimo Moqvist
Translation edited by G. Symes
“Yes, it is actually a slightly special story. We were really looking for a completely different wreck, from the 16th century. As early as 2005, I got in touch with a man whose father had found a wreck outside Dyngö when he was fishing for trout,” said von Arbin.
The father who found the wreck was no longer alive, but the son tipped off von Arbin about the find and told him that he had material that von Arbin and his team could see.
