Diving -as anything- with teenagers, can be an eye opening experience. While visiting the Gustav Adolf Wreck Park in Helsinki with my sons last summer, I was confronted with the fact, that not much had happened for the last two decades in the accessibility, presentation or protection of the historic wreck sites in Finnish waters. While listening my sons listing the numerous highlights of the dive, I recalled Dr. Minna Koivikko hinting about “adopting” wrecks in a manner local NAS chapters had done in the UK. The final push to materialize the vague idea, came from Riikka Ahlvik in the Finnish Heritage Agency’s annual field days in February, where she was presenting the Baltacar project.
The vague idea was that of getting the third sector i.e. associations, clubs etc. to adopt historical wrecks, in order to enhance their accessibility and presentation for the divers, thereby increasing their appreciation of our maritime cultural heritage and its protection.
It was easy to start setting an example, as the idea was met with great enthusiasm in our diving club Nousu ry. Also the great work of Salla-Maria Tikkanen at Gustav Adolf and Hanna Halonen at Hanko area wrecks helped tremendously the way forward, as proofs of concept had already been done. Coincidentally, I had some spare time in March to write the project plan for the Träskö-project, which aims at creating a large wreck park of the numerous Porkkala area wrecks and facilitating maritime archaeological research into those wrecks.
As a not very hidden agenda, Träskö-project also aims to challenge other dive clubs and associations to adopt wrecks on their own. Thus all project materials are published as “public domain”, to be freely used as templates for similar projects. The images, logos and trademarks within the project material and on this website are nonetheless property of their respective authors and owners.
Below, one can find the latest version (21.5.2018 – currently a bit out of date, as the on going activities are not included therein) of the project plan as PDF. The Word version can be acquired freely from the author by sending a request to info@wreckpark.eu.
