All the fun of the fjord

Cool times: divers above the wreck of the Consul Carl Fisser with dead men’s fingers Alcyonium digitatum in the foreground. All photographs by Simon Brown Diver with the propeller from the wreck of the SS Beaconsfield Exploring the wreck of a Heinkel HE 115 Clear view: around the stern of the wreck of the Torp Exploring a companionway on the Rimage Super structures: bridge superstructure on the Consul Carl Fisser The propeller of the MV Altair A cold-water eden Map of Norway

What makes a great wreck dive for your average rust-in-the-blood diver? Size matters, but being able to see the wreck in all its glory is a plus, and for that you need good visibility. Norway is one of the few northern destinations where you can visit big shipwrecks bristling with original features and spectacular marine life.

So, an alluring prospect. But if you’re contemplating a visit to the land of Fjords you need to weigh up the odds and see if it makes sense for your own diving preferences. The most obvious point is that the water is chilly, even by UK standards – I visited in autumn, when water temperatures varied between 9 and 13°C. The second point is that even in the clearest temperate water, seasonal plankton blooms can reduce visibility when they occur. Finally, in addition to being an adept drysuit diver, you need experience with decompression dives, as many of the better-preserved wrecks are relatively deep. If you tried to dive them without decompression, you’d be limited to single-figure bottom times, though there are excellent scenic dives in the 10–20m range.

A trip to Norway is really for diving purists. If you just fancy a bit of a bimble with a few pints in the evening, there are cheaper places to do it. Beer is very expensive at around £6 a pint, and dinner for two in a run-of-the-mill restaurant is likely to cost £100. The best way to circumnavigate these costs is to book onto a liveaboard where all the meals are provided as part of the cost. I was on board the Sula, a spacious, comfortable vessel which accommodated 12 divers without feeling crowded.

The following wrecks are part of a typical Sula itinerary. It starts in Trondheim, with an overnight steam to the wreck of the Torp at Kristiansund. From Kristiansund we sailed for six hours southwest, hugging the coast towards Ålesund.

Here, then, is a selection of the key dives on Sula’s itinerary, with my own marks out of ten for each of the the shipwrecks.

S/S Beaconsfield
The Beaconsfield sank in 1905 after striking a rock in thick fog and now lies flattened in an exposed spot near Sjurstarene with just the bows, boilers and four-bladed propellers standing above the acres of collapsed steel. The bow is laid over on the starboard side but just aft the decks and hull have collapsed. Intact wrecks such as the Fisser and Rimage [see page 57] had raised my expectations and if I’m being honest the Beaconsfield was flattened beyond recognition.
5/10

Heinkel HE115 seaplanes
Located just 100m from Sula’s dock in Trondheim are two Second World War vintage Heinkel He115 floatplanes. Both have their BMW radial engines in place and the more intact example has some of its flight controls and the rear machine gunner’s cockpit. The second example is in poorer condition and is being slowly buried by the silt, but it’s still worth a visit. There is a long swim at 40m between the two aircraft, but thankfully there is a guide rope to follow linking the pair. Keep an eye on your contents gauge and leave plenty of reserve to deploy a delayed marker buoy before ascending, as there may be small boat traffic.
7/10

Torp
The good thing about small wrecks such as the Torp is that you can take in the entire length of the vessel if visibility is good enough. I descended to the stern at a maximum depth of 28m and could still make out the bow at a distance of 24m. This wreck lies on a slope, making it a very enjoyable multi-level dive. The Torp was originally built for the German navy in 1943, and passed to Norwegian ownership after the war. It sank on 1 January 1992 when a hurricane tore her from her moorings, forcing the vessel onto the rocks just below the lighthouse near Kristiansund. The wreck is now owned by Kristiansund dive club.
7/10

Rimage
The deepest wreck of the trip (it’s 40m to the deck), the 3,500 tonne Rimage lies close to the Fisser in ValderØyfjorden, just outside Ålesund. Sunk on 17 March 1945 during the same attack that sank the Iris, the Rimage is in excellent condition – even the masts are still in place. The descent line led to the corner of one of the holds just forward of the bridge, her superstructure is remarkably well preserved but she is a deep wreck (by non trimix standards) and the decks slope down to the bows at 60m.
7/10

Consul Carl Fisser
The Fisser is a wreck to dive again and again; it’s so vast a single visit cannot do it justice. It sits perfectly upright on a slope, with the stern at 20m and the bow at 45m. It sank after being bombed by the RAF on 3 May 1942, but in all honesty I couldn’t find a scrap of evidence that hinted at a fire or bomb blast. Everyone in our group dived this wreck at least twice, and a few begged to do a third dive, while others dived the slightly deeper Rimage. From the stern it’s easy to navigate to the bow (gas and decompression permitting); and the clear visibility opened up the vista, allowing me to appreciate just how big a 5,900 tonne ship is. The Fisser does have a deep layer of silt on the decks so it’s best to keep off the wreck but if penetration is your thing there are plenty of access points. You can enter the engine room via the skylights but you’ll find yourself at 50m, so caution is advised.
10/10

M/V Altair
Another victim of the Second World War, the wreck now lies in two sections; the bow of the Altair is in 20m, while the rest of the structure sits at 35m. We dived the stern section and as we dropped under the layer of plankton the view really opened up to reveal a huge upturned hull standing proud of the rocky sea bed. Acres of steel stretched beyond view in either direction, so we followed the keel before eventually finding the break. It was as if a huge axe had split the hull, the break was remarkably clean with just a relatively small area where it might be possible to explore the insides. A group of divers were following the wreck back to the break, their torchlight stabbing through the green waters as the hull towered above them, giving a real sense of scale. The four-bladed prop is the most photogenic part of the wreck.
7/10

Skarnsundet – a cold-water Eden
Cold-water coral reefs (Lophelia pertusa) are found throughout the oceans of the world, normally in water between 150 and 2,000m deep, but there is one known example at a depth of 42m in Trondheim Fjord, known as Skarnsundet. Growth rates can be slow, between 4 and 25mm in a single year, and the age of the oldest reefs in Norwegian waters are estimated to be 8,000 years old. Although hard cold-water corals are similar to their tropical relatives, there are several crucial differences; Tropical corals live in shallow, sunlit water that never drops below 18°C and are dependent on a symbiotic relationship with algae for much of their food. Cold-water corals feed exclusively on organic particles in the water and are not dependent on either sunlight or algae and build reefs in locations exposed to cold water currents between 4° and 8°C. This eerily beautiful reef is only 20m long, but, it provides a habitat for many creatures. Alongside the filter- feeding corals and gorgonians, I saw edible crabs, squat lobster and large sponge colonies and in the waters above swam Norwegian redfish. Visiting the reef was a truly unique experience. The vista reminded me of both UK diving and the tropics; somewhere familiar but at the same time so surreal, out of context and quite unlike anything I had ever seen before. For me, this is the world’s most fascinating dive site.


Need to know
Simon Brown’s trip was booked through Norwegian dive travel specialist XO Holidays (www.xoholidays.com) with flights through SAS (www.flysas.com), a pro-diver airline which charges a bargain 5 euros (at time of writing) for an extra dive bag. Air to 300 bar and nitrox are both available and trimix can be booked in advance. Weights and cylinders are part of the package and twin-sets and stage cylinders are also available.