Diving Romania

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Indeed, you can have some nice diving in Romania, You are British, so you aren't afraid of cold water or poor visibility. If you are into wreck diving, you'll find some interesting sites: two Russian submarines (ShCh-213, infamous for sinking the Struma and a yet to be identified Malyutka class) and a Russian destroyer (Moskva). There is also a cargo ship from WWII - Arkadia. We also have some modern cargo ships, out of which 3 are in the close vicinity of Constanta harbour - they all sank by hitting the huge harbour breakwater in storms. And there are some more, but those are the most well known.

Most dives are in the range of 20-26 meters. ShCh-213 is up to 32 meters, Moskva is at about 43-45, and the Malyutka one at ~37 meters. Except for the submarines (which have the hull completely closed), there are some nice penetration oportunities if you are into that. All year round, the water at those depths will be between 7 and 12 degrees. Surface water can reach up to 25 degrees in summer, but there will be a thermocline at 7-10 meters normally, and then you'll drop into cold waters. Most of the time the visibility under the thermocline is very good on the wrecks out at sea (shch2-13, Moskva, Malyutka) - usually more than 10 meters, a little less better at Arkadia. The worst is at the breakwater wrecks (Paris, You Xiu and Sadu). In the worst case you can have a 1-2 meters visibility, but statistically over 8 years of diving there, about 60% are good visibility dives according to my logbook.

I personally prefer the Aquarius dive center from the links above. With them I have dived to all those sites. They have a fast (200HP) RIB, the travel to all the dive sites is between 20 minutes and 1 hour to the most far away. The owner is a Dutch guy who moved to Romania a long time ago. They are also great into servicing equipment, and they can provide PADI and IANTD training. The drive from Bucharest is 2 hours to Constanta, so most of the times I leave at 6AM from home, do the dives and return in the evening. Their boat will be in the water this year in the second half of May.

As a final tip, follow windguru.cz for marine forecasts. When you see that the South wind has blown in the last 5-6 days be very happy, it brings crystal clear waters. When you see the North blowing, chances are the water will be murky from the Danube.


Hi, thanks for all the info you seem to know a lot about diving here, do you know if there are any clubs or groups in Bucharest that go diving in different places at the weekends? I heard there was a dive club in Bucharest but I can't seem to find them any more!
 
Unfortunately here diving is not so much about "clubs" as I heard it is in UK. Normally you would go diving with some dive center, and you will start to know people who are frequent customers over there. You might start having a common schedule with them (like gathering together enough people interested in some specific wreck which is normally not very visited because of distance or whatever reason), and so on.

If you go frequently enough, it will feel almost like a dive club in the end. Just lacking any formal organization whatsoever.
 
If you come a little bir further to Istanbul-Turkey you are welcome to join our club :) We will be going to Ayvalik on 15 and 16th and to Kas on 29 and 30th of this month. As winter is coming we will slow down after this events. Only a few dive events will take place during winter but between May and October we dive nearly all weekends.
 
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Does anyone know of a BSAC or more likely PADI dive instructor based in Bucharest, preferably English speaking?
 
Indeed, you can have some nice diving in Romania.
Thank you very much vixtor, very interesting info I didn't know about
Are all the most important dives close to Constanța on the Black Sea? Would you suggest Constanța as a base for a diving trip to Rumania or are there any other relevant spots close to other towns?
Thanks
 
I found this post to which I have replied a long time ago. As I see over the years people have added questions and replies to it, I thought this might be helpful for the future.

If you are looking into more information about the wrecks on the Romanian coast of the Black Sea, here is my website where I have collected the information that I was able to research over the years:

 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/peregrine/

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