Our World – Underwater Scholarship Society in Europe

After two weeks spent diving and filming in Kongsjord, time has come to move to my next destination. I flew from Kirkenes back to Oslo, and visited there Nina Bratland and Jonas Lundberg (and their foster kid, Katrina) – they’re partners, working “normal” jobs most of the time, and in free time – taking diving groups to tropical destinations, or just teaching people diving on local sites. I joined them as they taught a PADI OWD course with Divestore, a dive centre located close to Oslo, in Drøbak. It was quite interesting experience – the happy group taking the course were of different backgrounds and jobs, with different time availabilities over Thursday-Sunday period, but everybody got to do these 6 training dives (or some more, actually), so the course was success for all! Our dive site was surprising, too – Divestore’s local reef is surrounded by underwater wall, that separates dive site from open fjord, and limits depth to 18 meters – perfect for the initial training! In the evenings, Nina and Jonas showed me around Oslo, that I turned to like a lot, as not-so-big but very cozy and friendly city. Nina and Jonas – thank you!

From Oslo, I travelled to Bergen, then with ferry – and finally I was picked up by Ørjan Sandness in his RIB, and travelled to Gulen Dive Resort. It’s a diving operation run by Ørjan and his wife, Monica Bakkeli, in this almost most-westerly spot in Norway. Gulen is located slightly north of Bergen, and it’s not really a city, but a commune – being a new concept for me, commune is community of several families, living over a large area, but not all at the same place.

Short RIB ride between steep slopes of rocky mountains, forming a maze of canals, bays, islands, penninsulas, makes a stunning impression. As it turns out, Gulen’s underwater is also just like that – only submerged! Huge walls that make you feel tiny (and make you check your depth gauge frequently), massive rocks or hills, and lots, lots of surprises. Level of complication of the rocky bottom might be the reason for the number of wrecks around – some of them sunk because of simply taking the wrong turn. One of them, quite famous – Frankenvald – is a pre-WW2 German steamship, in a calm and sheltered site which preserved it very well. No lives were lost when it sunk, but the level of detail of it’s last moments picture is amazing – you can even find captain’s wellington boots on the bridge! I surfaced from this dive bursting with laughter.

As there aren’t any businesses close nearby (it’s couple of kilometers to the nearest shop), therefore Gulen Dive Resort is very self-dependant. They have a dive centre, accommodation for divers – so-called cabins, with big kitchen and salon, including even a camera desk, also a dive bar (”200 BAR”), and some other small but cool amenities, such as hot tub for cold evenings!

Gulen is another dive destionation unique in it’s location, and diving it’s offering. It really nicely organized, and therefore hosts events such as high-profile Scandinavian Photo Workshop, or various tech-groups meet-ups. It’s been great to experience it myself – I already missed that place moments after setting off!

Thank you Monica, Ørjan and Lenny for this great week…

 

When traveling as a Rolex Scholar, you don’t always find a lot of time for running the blog – I haven’t found much of it for last two months Now, after catching up with other things finally, comes the blog!

At the second half of July, I flew to small city of Kirkenes in northern Norway, then took a ferry to Berlevag, and finally drove last bit of road with Christoph, who with his partner Maren were my hosts, and run KISS – Kongsfjord International Scuba School. Kongsfjord is a small village (population 35!) on a side of a fjord of the same name. From there, their operation runs diving, arctic fishing or king-crab-fishing, RIB rafting etc. all (weather permitting) year long.

In this area, “all year long” takes a whole new meaning. In the summer, for many weeks sun doesn’t even set, temperatures are well over 10, and plankton in the water goes blooming. In the winter, on the other hand, sun doesn’t even rise – sometimes snow blocks the road, sometimes arctic storm hits the coast hard, but lots of time you can still go diving under the northern lights, in the crystal-clean water.

A goal of my stay was shooting the video of Kongsfjord’s underwater – but we truly did take it easy! For first couple of days, we just went diving every day, to get me accustomed to local conditions. Except for rather cold water, it involved sometimes heavy wave action or a ripping current – but Christoph and Maren know their business, so no surprises there. Most of diving with them happens inside Kongsfjord fjord, or one of neighboring ones. They have also several divespots located offshore, but there’s more then enough interesting stuff that’s sheltered. Marine growth is abundant, marine animals – depending on the time of year. At my visit, you could see quite a lot of famous king-crab, not at it’s best though – in the winter, the large ones come up from depths (they don’t like UV), and they reach width of 2 meters! Besides that, lots of shrimps and various fish species. But at this latitude, life works in yearly cycle, so in other time frame, one could see beluga whales, killer whales, or huge amounts of atlantic salmon just born. There’re couple of wrecks in the area, too – like Martha, one in 40 meters depth just 3 minutes boat ride off the village.

Because communities in this region are quite remote, they need to depend more on themselves. This also applies for everyday needs like food – most of the food comes from the sea, either caught by yourself, or one of your neighbors. Part of my hosts’ business is running fishing tours, so they never lacked a great fish or crab for the dinner! (or actually breakfest, too) It’s not unreachable, though, of course – you can feed yourself from the supermarket. It’s just way more expensive.

Once you get out of the water, Kongsfjord’s area has a lot to itself, too. Just couple of minutes from the village there’re remains of German fort from second world war. German soldiers have arrived in November, and in few months of deep winter, in freezing darkness, have built a post to fight off Russian army. You can find memories of those times all over the place – shells here and there, over- or underwater, sometimes unfired munitions, some personal items, that now are already rare finds though… If you drive kilometer or two from the shore, you’ll find yourself on an elevated, rocky plateau, dotted with lakes, rivers, and patches of snow – even in July.

Hospitality of my hosts, and area different than any other I visited before – made it so fun to be up there. I hope to be back there, this time – in wintertime!

 

Hey everyone, this is Filip Wolski – new European Rolex Scholar. Thanks for reaching this page! I’m just about to start blogging on my journey of u/w world. Last couple of months has been great times for myself – ever since posting my application for the Scholarship, time was speeding up, more great things were happening… And here I am, already a bit into my program, posting from Gulen Dive Center in Norway. Will get back to that.

Just a quick overview, on what I’ve been up to before… First Scholarship trip, yet before becoming officially a Scholar, took me in March to London, for London International Dive Show – a big event for companies and individuals involved in diving, who exhibit, present and meet up there. For me – chance to meet a great lot of people, these who are involved with my program, and others – who will be! (hopefully, at least). Quickly followed by another trip, at the end of August – another big city, and another big event. This time, it was Our World-Underwater Scholarship Society meeting – as they (now, we) do annually – in New York. Quick paced weekend passed, filled with presentations, introductions, making plans… A big highlight of it was a dinner in Explorer’s Club headquarters, with which new Scholars were officially introduced as Scholars. Three new students – Myfanwy, Matt and myself – are gonna be changing the world of diving. Stay tuned!

Since New York, I have been on a road for couple of months already. I have been snorkeling with basking sharks in Cornwall, diving amazing sites in Scapa Flow at Orkney islands, Kongsfjord and Gulen in Norway, and in quite a number of other places along the way. I spent a week in Aberdeen, learning of commercial dive industry, visited Apeks company in Blackburn (and got sponsored by them with Tek3 reg set!) or PADI & BBC Natural History Unit in Bristol (both thanks to previous European Scholars, now working there!), and participated in National Geographic’s expedition to the wreck of Britannic.

Soon back to you, thanks again for reaching the page!

You can find some more pictures from my route here