Strangest Places To Dive April 6, 2016 by lukesheppard

Do you want a break from the usual coral and fish watching? Do you wish to explore something different and perhaps out of the ordinary? The ocean is an amazingly beautiful place but it is also wonderfully unusual. There are a number of strange locations lurking beneath the ocean from underwater parks, to ancient lost cities. Below are five of some of the most mysterious, absurd and strangest places to dive…  

SILFRA LAKES

To start off the list we have Silfra Lakes in Iceland. This is where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plate’s meet and you can dive in between them. The plates actually move as you dive through them…although at 2cm a year…outwards. Silfra is the only place on earth where you can dive between two continental plates. It has also been cited as the clearest water on earth with over 100m visibility.  

RUMMU PRISON

Rummu prison in Estonia is where the decaying ruins of a Soviet prison is now drowning in a quarry lake where convicts were forced to work. It was opened in the forties by the Soviet Union and closed in the nineties. It has since been left to rot but you can still explore the workhouses in clear water. As you dive through a chain fence you are greeted by buildings that are full of furniture, tools and machine parts.  

YONAGUNI MONUMENTS

Next up we have a real Atlantis in Japan. The Yonaguni Monuments is an ancient pyramid that went underwater two thousand years ago. It was accidentally discovered in the mid 1980s by some local divers. Its origins are still a mystery, although we guess aliens. It is only twenty-five metres down and the ruins span three hundred metres. The pyramid itself is well over five thousand years old. Scientists believe it was flooded thousands of years ago by an earthquake.  

GREEN LAKE

Remember your picnic baskets for this one as we take a leisurely stroll through the park…underwater. This is Green Lake in Austria where once a year the entire park floods. Every year the lake in the centre of the park doubles in size when melting winter snows flows from the mountains and floods the park. This means that benches, bridges and even trees get submerged under water. So make sure you come at the right time of year because you don’t want soggy sandwiches! Unfortunately diving in the lake has now been prohibited to preserve the site. But there is always the hope that it will re-open again.  

SHI CHENG

Now we’re off to China for the ancient ruins of Shi Cheng, also known as the Lion City. This is an underwater labyrinth of buildings and temples that are situated forty metres below the water in an artificial lake. Lion City was once the centre of politics and economics in the eastern province of Zhejiang China. The structures were built about one thousand three hundred years ago. You can still dive amongst the detailed and exquisite architecture that is still intact underwater.   Those were our top 5 strangest places to go diving. Which were your favourites? Or did we miss an unusual dive spot out?