June 4, 2011
End of Baltic Sea Expedition
So, it must come to an end. Saturday the Baltic Sea Expedition finished. We arrived to Stralsund in Germany, where Hanse Explorer was going to be transformed back to its normal look. This job toke days, as everything had to be packed properly and send back to Spain, where lots of the stuff, including the ROV, is going to be used on Oceana’s next expedition in the Mediterranean Sea. But before arriving to Stralsund, we managed to do several underwater recording in the southern Baltic Sea. We did scuba diving and ROV dives in different offshore areas in Swedish, Danish and German waters. On a dive south of Sweden, the divers had a dive which had the best visibility recorded on the whole expedition. It was around 15 meters, which again revealed for us that the Baltic Sea is in a concerning status. Compared to others seas, one of the divers had earlier this year made a dive in Cuban water, where the visibility was 50 meters. Our last ROV dive on this expedition showed a sand bottom with plenty of flatfish.
We arrived to Stralsund Saturday in sunny weather, and could look back on an eventful, exciting and rewarding expedition in the whole Baltic Sea!