Dennis Bakhuis

Dive site · lake · Dutch inland lakes

🇳🇱 Oostvoornse Meer

Oostvoorne, South Holland, Netherlands

Forty metres deep, brackish, unnaturally clear, full of wrecks — a lake made by the Delta Works out of the mouth of a river, and one of the most important training waters in the country.

Dives here
2
Deepest
14.8 m
Water
brackish
First · last
2008 · 2015

Revision 2 · changed 18 Oct 2026

History
  1. r2 18 Oct 2026 Photo size matches the file · Dennis Bakhuis
  2. r1 10 Oct 2026 Imported from the personal log · Dennis Bakhuis

Site data © divelog-sites contributors (ODbL), descriptions and maps CC BY-SA 4.0 · 53edcaf

1 map

↓6 m↓10 m↓15 m↓17 m↓20 mBandenspoorSteigerHuisje↓20 mBabbelbox↓15 mBus↓15 mWerkbank↓15 mRotterdamned↓15 mBootje↓10 mBoei↓12 mPlatform↓9 mGlijbaan↓7 mBanden↓9 mKever↓6 mMelvin↓5 mBoei↓9 mPlatform↓6 mKist↓12 mBootje↓16 mBootje↓15 mRobot↓17 mHeipalenbos↓10 mBuizen↓12 mBoei↓10 mDuikhelm↓13 mPlatform↓10 mAnker↓9 mVlot↓6 mTrap 1↓0 mTrap 2↓0 mTrap 3↓0 mTrap 4↓0 mInstap mindervaliden↓0 mN20 m
  • Entry / exit
  • Bus
  • Car
  • Boat
  • Wreck
  • Platform
  • Statue
  • Container
  • Pipe / tube
  • Anchor
  • House / hut
  • Other object
  • Shoreline
  • Depth contour
  • Wall / drop-off
  • Guide line
  • Depth
Site map · 25 objects · max 20 m

The Slag Stormvogel dive area on the north shore: objects, tyre tracks, the red guide line and depth contours, placed on the OpenStreetMap jetty; shoreline, jetty and stone breakwaters are from OSM. Object depths follow the contour bands except the Rotterdamned wreck (15 m, duiken.nl). All positions are approximate; the site coordinate lies about 1.7 km to the west-south-west in the lake, so the drawing sits offset from the origin.

Map © divelog-sites contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0 · 53edcaf

This one is a genuine oddity, and it is entirely artificial.

A dam across the Brielse Gat in 1950 cut the Brielse Maas off from the North Sea. A second dam in 1966 closed what was left, and the sand dug out of the resulting basin was used to build the Maasvlakte — the industrial platform of terminals and power stations that Rotterdam's port stands on. What remained was a 2.7 km² lake, 40 m deep, sitting in the old river mouth.

The water is brackish, half fresh and half salt, and it is deliberately kept that way: salt water is pumped in from the Beerkanaal to raise the salinity, which improves the visibility and supports a specialised ecosystem that exists almost nowhere else.

Because it was the mouth of the Brielse Maas, there are wrecks on the bottom from when it was still a river. Because it is 40 m deep and unusually clear for Dutch water, it is one of the country's most important training grounds — this is where people do their deep and technical work without leaving the Netherlands.

Two dives, June 2008 and April 2015, to 14.8 m.

Image: Oostvoornse meer.jpg — Hanhil at Dutch Wikipedia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Photos

Dived here with

Eric Kim

Nearby sites

2 dives at Oostvoornse Meer

Dives per year

  1. 12 Apr 2015 with Eric date12 Apr 2015 depth14.8 m time60 min water—
  2. 8 Jun 2008 with Kim boat date8 Jun 2008 depth10.3 m time37 min water—

Sources