What awaits us at Baltictech 2017? - enthusiasts and explorers

The Baltictech 2017 conference is fast approaching and the excitement is growing. What exactly will be waiting for us at the thresholds of the Science and Technology Park in Gdynia on the weekend of 25-26 November? This question arises repeatedly, so we decided to prepare an answer to it. We hope that our mini-cycle presenting the invited speakers and the topics they discuss will help you plan your time at the conference better and more efficiently!

Explorers, photographers, explorers, leaders, instructors, pioneers, enthusiasts… What an extraordinary nation of divers! Today, we are presenting the profiles of two people whose biographies prove how full the days are of people whose thoughts are still “one foot under water”.

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By combining knowledge from different fields you can constantly develop and fill more and more niches in the diving world. But… to the point. Other guests invited to the Baltictech 2017 conference are Sami Pakkarinen – Finnish cave diver, explorer, instructor and photographer – and Immi Wallin – history and underwater archaeology enthusiast, wreck researcher, diving instructor and ROV pilot.

Sami Pakkarinen has been closely associated with water since early childhood. He completed his first diving course in 1995. Since then he has continued to grow and expand into other areas of the diving world. Sami is a technical and cave diving instructor, and training young students is his passion. When he is not teaching, he is engaged in wreck prospecting and cave exploration.

On land, on the other hand, he loves to talk about his underwater finds and expeditions. He does this not only with words, but also with images (at Baltictech 2013, together with Antti Apunen, they presented a topic on making photo and video documentation in extreme cave conditions). From his dives he prepares extensive photo essays full of extraordinary pictures. During the conference he will tell us about Veggfjellan – a Nordic expedition to a flooded cave, as well as about risk management in technical diving. Sami is also a member of the legendary Scandinavian dive group Divers of the Dark.

Immi Wallin is most easily described by the term ‘orchestra man’. Enchanted by the Baltic Sea and its wrecks, she founded SubZone, a company dedicated to exploring the region. She has been diving since the age of twelve and has been a technical diver for thirty years. She holds a captain’s licence for vessels up to 500 tonnes, allowing her to command the research vessel ‘SubZone’. She is passionate about archaeology and history. She is also certified as an ROV operator and has successfully trained new generations of divers.

Immi is a specialist in wreck documentation techniques and underwater habitat surveys. She has been conducting research expeditions in the Baltic region for more than twenty years. Thanks to her activities, many wrecks from the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as warships from World War I and World War II, have been documented. As CEO of SubZone Oy, she provides the field and logistical infrastructure needed to explore the underwater world.

Working closely with the Finnish National Antiquities Chamber and the Estonian National Heritage Chamber. During the conference he will talk about the wrecks of the northern part of the Baltic Sea and, in the next lecture, about the methodology of their search and identification.

It promises to be really interesting! We hope that everyone has already marked in red the weekend of 25-27 November, put exclamation marks on it and made a plan to get to Gdynia. See you there! And tomorrow the next part of our mini-cycle – “What awaits us at Baltictech 2017”.

All information can also be found on the official conference website baltictech.com