Sinyavino Lake & Yantarny

Every dive starts from the shore. The centres sit on the lake's sandy beach, so a diving day is a walk into the water and back to the same base. The Yantarny underwater park covers a patch of lake 150 by 150 m, and its exhibits are reached only behind an instructor or dive guide, with several routes to suit the divers' training. Open-sea Baltic dives are a separate outing: hard, weather dependent and only for divers with specific training.

The pit filled after the quarry closed, leaving clay slopes cut into ridges, valleys and gorges, with a bottom covered in greenish growth. Visibility runs to about 15 m, and a thermocline sets in from about 8 m. Objects left from the quarry years are grown over with shells and have become a kind of artificial reef, joined by sunken boats, lifeboat capsules and placed installations such as a motorcycle, a cannon and a shark, while the park's exhibits were supplied by the amber works itself.

The lake suits new and newly certified divers: Open Water is enough for its main sights, and first-time divers can join the park route through its partner dive centres. The lake bottoms out at 28 m, below the park's deepest exhibit, and the most experienced divers can reach all six exhibits in one dive of about 40 minutes. It also suits divers drawn to industrial history, since the park tells the story of amber mining on the spot where it happened.