All posts by Holger Buss

Klaipeda 2022

We just finished the project week: “Wrecks – Identification, documentation and 3D” of the Baltic Sea Heritage Rescue Project BSHRP. Together with captain Linas and his diving ship NZ55, we dived seven days in the Baltic Sea. We dived and scanned some new exciting wrecks. On an international conference in September we will present some of them.

Annika, Gerrit, Holger, Linas, Andreas

You can find the results here

Vernissage Grossensee

Elmar invited to the opening of the Grossensee exhibition in the museum www.museum-hoisdorf.de

They are showing my collection of these models: Grossensee


Numerous visitors visited the special exhibition “Wrecks in the Grossensee” in the village museum on Saturday. For 2.5 years, a volunteer conservationist had been carrying out underwater archaeological investigations in the Großesee for the archaeological state office in Schleswig and thus unintentionally initiated one of the few free research projects during the corona lockdowns. In a team with experienced representatives of the North German wreck diving scene, a total of five boat wrecks were tracked down in the Großesee. Two almost ten meter long barges are undoubtedly relics of a fishing operation that dates back to the 13th century. These two barges are believed to have been sunk when operations were shut down in 1935. At the exhibition, the project should be presented in a tangible way. In addition to films, drawings and an image gallery, 3D prints of all wrecks, which were created after complex photogrammetry recordings, could also be seen. The hobby researchers also reported on this and other citizen science projects. One or the other find from the Grossensee could also be viewed up close. A great opportunity for young and old to experience up close the methods that are used today for research under water. Visitors could look through the viewfinder of professional underwater camera equipment, shoulder a complete set of diving equipment or even be explained on board a diving rescue boat how to go looking for wrecks with a sidescan sonar. The exhibition can be visited until October 1st, 2022

Scanning the Salem Express

In July my wife and I scanned the famous Salem Express.

1991 the ferry struck a reef in the Red Sea. The accident happened at night and the ferry sank very quickly. Only 200 people were able to save themselves. Officially, there was talk of around 700 victims, probably significantly more. The wreck has been declared an official grave. Diving is allowed, but entering the passenger cabins is prohibited.
Continue here

Airbrush

Some models cannot be colored with simple brushes. So, I decided to try airbrush. I attended an airbrush taster course and am amazed at what is possible with this technique. For sure I will use this in addition to my normal brush painting. I was at the professional airbrush artist Roland Kuck

Hurghada

We went to Egypt – again. This time just for holiday with the family. Anyway, we took the opportunity to dive and scan some wrecks there.

We went to the hotel Jaz Makadina at Makadi Bay. It is close to Hurghada and has a diving base of Scubaworld. We met the the manager Herbert there and he arranged two wreck diving trips to support my scanning work. I can show the first results of the Minesweeper and a fishing trawler now. The trawler is just some diving minutes apart from the minesweeper, so we decided to scan both during one dive.

One bigger wreck is still on process and I will publish it later.

El Mina

The minesweeper lies in 30m water depth. The correct name was “Minija”. She sank Feb 2nd 1970 after an Israeli airstrike. The visibility can be quite quite poor, caused by other divers and strong current.

You can find the Model here: El Mina

Fishing Trawler

The fishing vessel “FV Mohamed Hasabella” lies close to the mine sweeper “El Mina” in 30m water depth. Only some minutes diving distance at south of the wreck of the minesweeper at Hurghada, Red Sea (Egypt).

You can find the Model here: HurghadaTrawler

DIVE Magazine

I am proud to announce that the international magazine DIVE issue # 27 has covered our 3D liveaboard project in the Red Sea. As you know my wife and me scanned 8 1/2 wrecks in fife days. Including the famous wrecks of Thistlegorm, Giannis D, Chrisoula K, Carnatic, Ulysses, Kimon M, …

You can find our models and a ‘Making of’ here: AegyptModels.
Buy the magazine here: DIVE issue #27
Read the article here

Schweriner See

Elmar, Erhardt and I were invited by Kosi from this diving base: https://dive-schwerin.de, to dive two very interesting wrecks: A fighter aircraft from 1954 and a wooden wreck from 1911.

Find the models here: SchwerinerSee

Thistlegorm

The German magazine Divemaster (Issue 113) released my artice about the famous Thistlegorm.

On eight pages, my wife and I tell the story of how we scanned and built the model of the wreck.

You can find the model here: Thistlegorm

Fehmarn

My wife Nicola and I were invited by the diving base www.atlantis-tauchshop.hamburg to scan the wrecks around Fehmarn.

You can find the scans and the wrecks here: Fehmarn

An interesting meeting

We were pleased to meet Ingo Oppelt. He is the captain of a wreck search and survey boat on the Baltic Sea and has been an active wreck diver since 1994. He is known in the diving world for his books on wreck diving in the western Baltic Sea, published in 2007 and 2019.

Wracktauchen – Die schönsten Tauchplätze der Ostsee
ISBN: 978-3-00-064263-0

France – Hyeres

I successfully completed diving instructor exam (TL**) in southern France 🤘 It was an exciting week with a great team!

I took the opportunity to scan two wrecks.: Ville de Grasse an Michel C. And of course my darling was with me 😘… so my 3D printer 😎

We were able to surprise the trainers at the end of the week with the finished model. This was the first time the captain and former base manager of Diving-Giens was completely speechless!

You can find the models here: France

Hemmoor

Kreidesee – again! There was the DIR-GER meeting of tec-divers that we wanted to join. Always a pleasure to meet all the crazy divers.

And there were still some items missing in my 3D-collection. You can find the complete Hemmoor collection here.
And the 3D-Files for Download here.

Concrete bomb – Betonbombe

Boat at E5

Quite deep, but with a great visibility.

Caravan – Wohnwagen at 40m

Egypt 1

My wife and me went on a diving safari to the Red Sea. We did the ‘North Tour’ with lots of wrecks. The Goal: Nine wrecks in fife Days – that was quite a challenge!

We took the Ship MY BLUE PEARL from https://www.blueplanet-liveaboards.com/

It will take some days to process all the data. You can find the models here: Aegypt

Messinghausen

SEE IM BERG – “MESSINGHAUSEN” – An old quarry in a mountain is a great diving spot in Germany.

https://www.see-im-berg.de/

Find the files for 3D-Printing here: Messinghausen

Wetnotes: Carl Zeiss

Six pages in the diving magazine #wetnotes about our investigation of a wreck in the Baltic Sea. The inevitably uninteresting wreck ‘W30’ turns out to be the training ship ‘Carl Zeiss’ that sank in the Baltic Sea during World War II. We examined and scanned it as part of the BalticSeaHeritageRescueProjects.
My model will be exhibited in the Maritime Museum in Lithuania.

Here the survey report: https://dive3d.eu/reports/CarlZeiss.pdf

Grossensee

There is an old lake “Großensee” close to Hamburg. The underwater archaeologist Elmar Klemm examines the history of the lake and the wooden wrecks. I was invited to make the 3D-Models for the project.
Elmars website: historytaucher.de

See my 3D-Collection at Sketchfab.com here

Wreck One

The main wreck and the biggest so far. It was an old fisherman boat.

Drawing by wrackzeichner.de

Wreck Two

Drawing by wrackzeichner.de

Other Wrecks

We found three other wrecks of different ages and a old bathing tub.

Video

A short video by Jens-Uwe Lamm about the project (German)