Jurmo Island Wreck Diving

Turku · Archipelago Sea · Finland

Jurmo sits at the outer edge of Finland's Archipelago Sea, a scattering of granite skerries and rocky islets marking the boundary between sheltered inner waters and the open Baltic. For centuries this maze of shallow reefs and narrow passages has been both a navigational aid and a graveyard for ships transiting the busy trade routes between Stockholm, Turku, and St Petersburg. The wrecks that litter the seabed around Jurmo span four hundred years of maritime history, and the cold, brackish, oxygen-poor Baltic water has preserved them with a fidelity that saltwater wrecks can only envy. I boarded a dive charter in Nagu on a still June morning and motored two hours south through the outer archipelago, passing hundreds of bare granite skerries colonised by cormorants and grey seals. The first wreck site was a 19th-century wooden merchant brig lying on her starboard side at 28 metres. Dropping down the shot line, I watched the pale Baltic water darken to a greenish twilight. The wreck materialised gradually: first the bowsprit, still attached and pointing skyward at an angle, then the hull planking with its rows of iron fasteners furred with a thin coat of mussels. The preservation was extraordinary. Deck beams were still in place, and through a collapsed section of the stern I could see stacked cargo holds with the outlines of barrels visible in the silt. The cold water had arrested the decay that tropical wrecks suffer within decades, leaving wood that felt almost sound to the touch. Baltic herring drifted through the rigging shadows in loose schools, and a large perch held station beneath the rudder post, its barred flanks catching my torch beam.