I had organized my dives before I got to Estonia with the very efficient Kert Meidra of ElBellz Diving. E-mail:
kert.meidra@elbellz.com.
www.sukeldumine.ee Tel: +372-510-0898 or Mobile: +372-509-3333. Its a new diving outfit in swish new premises in Pereta inside the Pereta Hotel & Spa complex a 30 minute drive from the center of Tallinn. Kert is a PADI Course Director and has also taken various technical driving classes. He can blend nitrox and trimix.
Kerts establishment is brand new and he hasnt had time to advertise yet but he is already very busy simply because he seems to be the only dive operator in Estonia who bothers answering inquiries to dive coming in via e-mail. Theres a surprisingly active dive scene in Tallinn. You can often do two night dives during the week in summer and more over the weekend. There are about 300 known wrecks in Estonia and less than half have been found.
Kert picked me up at my hotel (LErmitagea new no frills city hotel just outside the old city costing Euro 97 for a single) for my first night dive. A boat dive with rental of a full set of equipment cost 600 EEK (just over $50). You can dive with a wet or dry suit. Water temperatures vary between 18-20C in quarries and 14-16C in the ocean in summer for shallow wrecks and 6C for deeper wrecks. Deeper wrecks are dark as well as being cold so make sure you have experience diving in such conditions and in a dry suit before attempting this. The Baltic Sea is not very saline so you wont need as much weight as usual. Boat is a small RIB. There is a bigger fiber glass dive boat rented out by other dive clubs/operators which is more spaciousbut try getting them to answer your e-mails or calls!
We left the dock at about 9:30 PM, did a 25 minute dive and were back at the dock by 11:30 PM. We dove a Soviet mine sweeper of the Ilyusha class, a shallow wreck (15 meters), deliberately sunk by the Soviets during WWII to prevent it from getting into German hands. It took several tries to get the anchor to hook into the wreck. (Floating mooring lines are either stolen or drift away). Kert and another instructor did some filming for a video series on Baltic wrecks. One diver was doing his second night dive that day and went off by himself, and I was paired with a DM. I got cold in a double 5 MM at 15 C and so vowed to wear a dry sit on my next dive. All the instructors and divemasters were wearing them. We saw lots of jelly fish, wires and other wreck artifacts although it was stripped petty clean. We then dropped the gear back off at the dive shop before Kert drove me back to my hotel at 12:45 AM.
We dove the Christine the next evening. This is a fishing boat sunk when she went over a mine. She lies at 27 M and even at the height of summer the water temperature around her was a chilly 6 C. Viz was poor (half a meter or less). We left the harbor at around 6:30 PM and got back to the dock at about 9:30 PM because we had some engne trouble on the way to the wreck. (It doesnt start getting dark in Talinn in summer until about 8:30 PM).
