The Belgian Divemonkey diving club has a history and diving in out of the way places. Jérémy Ransy the director of Divemonkey has organized diving to Antarctica, Fiji, Marshall Islands and more., Aslanbek, one of the club divers had told them of the Chechen region and of course a seed was planted to develop the expedition.

Diving in this region was unheard of. There were no dive centres and the team had to organize every single piece of diving equipment and diving support equipment from compressors, to O2 and Helium gases. Much was bought inside Russia and shipped from all over the country to Chechnya for the team. The paperwork and permissions also proved to be challenging and 6 months was spent by the dive team specifically training for the wilderness diving to be undertaken.

A four hour drive with 1.5 tons of gear was needed to reach the first destination, Lake Kazenoy-am, on the border between Dagestan and Chechnya, at an altitude of 1870 m. After several days setting up equipment and blending gases the first dives were undertaken with survey results showing a newly discovered depth for the lake of 75m. Surveys and measurements revealed a new picture of the Lakes topography. During a four hour runtime, the decompression element revealed a huge variety of fauna and flora, including the famous ‘fighting trout’.

To get to the next planned site, Lake Galaynchoj-Am, over 60km on all terrain vehicles over a recently dynamited road was required, true wilderness. Greeted on arrival by Chechen special forces armed from head to toe, the threat of bears quickly became very real. After a BBQ focused bonding session on arrival between the team and its hosts the next days mapped the lake, noting a max depth of 35m and surveyed the lakes flora and fauna.

Sadly the weather prevented the third planned exploration site, but given the achievements to date the team were very happy to have got so much done and to have avoided and bear related incidents! Work continues analysing the data developed during the expedition.