- Open Water course
- €350
Updated July 2026
Good to know
Good to Know
- This is technical, cold-water Baltic wreck diving, not warm-water reef diving — most named wrecks sit at 24-39m and call for Advanced Open Water plus a Deep Diver (and sometimes Wreck Diver) specialty, so it's not beginner-friendly territory.
- Bring or rent a drysuit; water temperatures and low visibility are the norm rather than the exception, even in summer.
- Rummu Quarry is a completely different (freshwater, non-marine) experience from the sea wrecks and is the more accessible/beginner-friendly option, including for first-time Discover Scuba dives, but it's a road trip out of Tallinn rather than a boat dive.
- Do not attempt to dive the MS Estonia ferry wreck — it lies far outside Tallinn's day-trip range and diving there is legally banned as a protected grave site.
- Most 'Tallinn' scuba training actually happens at Rummu Quarry, roughly 40-50 minutes outside the city, because the quarry's clear water and sunken-prison scenery are far better for beginner training dives than the cold, often murky Baltic Sea near the harbor.
- Baltic Sea diving here is cold even in summer, and several operators emphasize dry-suit training and technical/wreck diving — Estonia's waters hold hundreds of documented shipwrecks, which is a genuine local specialty for more experienced divers.
- If you just want an Open Water certification and don't care about wrecks or cold water, budget for extra travel time/cost to and from the Rummu Quarry training site, since it's not a walk from the city center.
Dive Sites And Conditions
- Best Season
- The practical open-water dive season around Tallinn runs roughly May to October, with the warmest surface conditions in July-August; some operators also run Ice Diver specialty courses in winter using frozen inland sites. Outside this window, cold and reduced daylight make recreational diving impractical for most visiting divers.
- Access Summary
- Diving out of Tallinn is genuinely day-boat accessible, not liveaboard-dependent. Local PADI-affiliated dive operators run small-boat day trips from Tallinn's harbor area out to the wrecks scattered around Tallinn Bay and the nearby islands of Aegna and Naissaar (short boat rides, well within a single day trip), and to Rummu Quarry inland (a flooded former limestone/prison quarry roughly 40km southwest of Tallinn, reached by road, not boat). There is no liveaboard scene here — Baltic wreck diving around Tallinn is a shore-marina/day-boat operation, and Rummu is a car/shuttle day trip.
- Off Limits Site
- The MS Estonia ferry wreck (which sank in 1994 with major loss of life) lies about 80m deep near the Finnish island of Utö, well outside the Tallinn day-boat range in any case, but is also legally off-limits: diving on it is strictly prohibited under the 'Estonia Law' exclusion zone agreed by Finland, Sweden and Estonia, as it is treated as a protected grave site.
- Marine Life General
- Baltic wreck sites around Tallinn are not coral-reef environments; documented species include flounder, pouting, sea bass, flatfish, lumpsucker and monkfish, rather than the tropical reef fish typically associated with wreck diving elsewhere.
- Typical Day Trip Cost
- €80
- Water Type And Conditions Overview
- This is cold, dark, brackish Baltic Sea diving (Rummu Quarry is freshwater instead). Expect low visibility by tropical standards, near-zero water temperatures outside summer, and a drysuit as the practical norm rather than the exception. Many of the named wrecks sit at depths requiring Advanced Open Water plus a Deep Diver specialty, and some require wreck-penetration training.
Sites
Jaen Teär
- Type
- wreck (sailboat)
- Depth
- down to about 39m, decks at 34-36m
- Location
- Tallinn Bay, to the west of the Vahe-madal shoal
- Level Required
- AOWD plus Deep Diver specialty
- Notes
- A sailing vessel built in 1926 in Saaremaa that sank in 1944.
Bungsberg
- Type
- wreck
- Depth
- lies on its keel at about 38m, decks at 27-33m
- Location
- near the island of Naissaar
- Level Required
- AOWD plus Deep Diver specialty
- Notes
- The wreck is described as lying in one piece and well preserved.
Ex-Marie / ORe-35
- Type
- wreck (former guardship, ex-Dutch fishing trawler)
- Depth
- around 24m
- Location
- Tallinn Bay
- Level Required
- AOWD plus Deep Diver specialty
- Notes
- Originally a Dutch fishing trawler that was requisitioned as a German Ost-Reval flotilla guardship and used to trawl for mines in Tallinn Bay in 1943.
Raa
- Type
- wreck (32m sailing vessel)
- Depth
- about 26m, stands keel upright
- Location
- southeast of the island of Aegna
- Notes
- Believed to have sunk on 8 August 1941 after an explosion.
Tugboat "Heino"
- Type
- wreck (tugboat)
- Location
- close to the island of Aegna
- Notes
- Formerly named General Surovtsev, built 1902 in Riga, sank 21 November 1944 after a magnetic mine exploded nearby; the explosion detached part of the engine room wall and captain's bridge.
Tugboat "Tutti"
- Type
- wreck (tugboat)
- Location
- near the island of Aegna
- Notes
- Built in 1898 in Hamburg, sank the same night as Heino (21 November 1944) from a magnetic mine; described as quite well preserved, with the helm still intact.
Rummu Quarry
- Type
- flooded former quarry / freshwater site (not marine)
- Location
- roughly 40km southwest of Tallinn near Vasalemma, reached by road
- Notes
- A former limestone quarry and prison site now flooded with clear freshwater, with submerged prison buildings, machinery, and a partly submerged forest. Popular for beginner certification dives and as a photogenic, unusual non-wreck alternative to the cold Baltic sites; visibility can vary and has been reported as low as around 5m on some days.
Courses And Operators
Operator Density
- Caveat
- A diver-review aggregator (Zentacle) lists only 2 dive shops for all of Estonia, which is lower than the operator names we found individually — treat the exact count as approximate rather than a verified total.
- Summary
- A small but real cluster of named operators serves Tallinn, not just one or two shops. Documented names include Oxygene Tallinn (city-center classroom/store with a dive base at Rummu Quarry), Rummu Diving – Scuba Diving & Watersports (PADI 5-Star Dive Resort based at Rummu Quarry), ElBellz Diving / sukeldumine.ee (based ~30 minutes from central Tallinn, run by a PADI Course Director doing nitrox/trimix technical diving), and TopDiving.ee. A Tallinn-based diving equipment retailer (Divestock/XWDS Estonia OU) also operates in the city, though it is primarily a gear shop rather than a course provider.
- Rough Count
- Roughly 4-5 named, separately identifiable operators/dive centers with a Tallinn connection, most of them actually basing their open-water training dives at Rummu Quarry (a flooded limestone quarry about 40-50 minutes' drive from central Tallinn) rather than in the Baltic Sea itself.
Freediving Crossover
- Caveat
- We found freediving equipment rental at one operator and general 'watersports' framing of the Rummu site, but did not find a Tallinn-area shop clearly advertising structured freediving certification courses (e.g., AIDA/SSI/Molchanovs freediver levels) — so treat this as site/equipment crossover rather than confirmed freediving-course availability.
- Details
- Rummu Diving, the main quarry-based operator most Tallinn-based training feeds into, lists freediving equipment rental alongside scuba equipment rental and air fills as a standard offering. Rummu Quarry itself — with its notably clear, light-blue water and sunken prison ruins — is described in operator listings as a hub for watersports lovers generally (diving, snorkeling, paddleboarding), suggesting the same site draws both scuba divers and freedivers/snorkelers rather than being scuba-exclusive.
- Genuine Crossover Found
- Yes
Typical Course Costs
- Divemaster
- €440
- Rescue Diver
- €320
- Open Water Diver
- €350
- Dry Suit Specialty
- €160
- Two Dive Guided Trip
- €80
per person per day, 2 dives, includes instructor
- Bubblemaker Kids Intro
- €30
- Advanced Open Water Diver
- €250
- Open Water Scuba Instructor
- €575
- Enriched Air Nitrox Specialty
- €120
- Instructor Development Course
- €960
- Discover Scuba Diving Try Dive
- €30
- Currency Note
- Prices below come from one Tallinn-area operator's published course price list and should be treated as a typical/indicative range rather than a single fixed citywide price — other shops may price individual courses somewhat differently.
Certifying Bodies And Levels
- Dominant Body
- PADI
- Levels Commonly Offered
- PADI's full recreational line-up is documented at Tallinn-area shops, from beginner (Bubblemaker for kids, Discover Scuba Diving try-dive, Open Water Diver) through Advanced Open Water, Rescue Diver, a wide range of specialties (Enriched Air/Nitrox, Dry Suit, Night, Deep, Wreck, Ice, Search & Recovery, U/W Photography/Videography), and on into PRO-level courses (Divemaster, Assistant Instructor, Open Water Scuba Instructor, Instructor Development Course, Master Scuba Diver Trainer).
- Notes
- Oxygene Tallinn is a PADI 5-star IDC (Instructor Development) facility offering both recreational and PRO-level courses, and Rummu Diving is listed as a PADI 5 Star Dive Resort. One operator's owner is described as a PADI Course Director who also teaches technical diving (nitrox/trimix blending), so instructor-level and early technical training are genuinely available locally, not just entry-level Open Water. We found no clear evidence of SSI, NAUI, or CMAS certification centers operating in Tallinn itself, so PADI appears to be the dominant/best-documented system here.
AI-generated estimateData refreshed July 2026
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Data last updated July 2026 · Verify anything important.