A photograph capturing an unknown identity submarine off the coast of Finland alerted the Finnish Coast Guard. According to Yle, the state TV of Finland, a seaman on a cargo vessel, managed to take a photograph of an unknown identity submarine that was surfacing in the international waters.
The unknown submarine was spotted by the seaman on a merchant ship in the early hours of Monday morning, 4 May, in international waters southwest of Helsinki.
The seaman said to Yle, that the unknown submarine was on the surface about 800 meters from his ship. “Submarines use certain lights when they’re on the surface, and that’s how we knew what it was,” he said. “When we got a bit closer we recognised its shape clearly.”
According to the Finnish Coast Guard, they were aware of the latest photographed submarine.
Submarine sightings in the Gulf of Finland are not uncommon since often they travel from east to west. As the Commander of the Finnish Coast Guard mentioned,
“Submarines are built at St Petersburg’s shipyard, and they’re often tested in the deep waters off Gotland in the Baltic Sea”.
This is the second incident of unknown submarines spotted within or close to the territorial waters of Finland, in a period of one week.
On the 28 April the Finnish Navy dropped depth charges against an unidentified object that was spotted on Monday 27 April, within Finnish territorial waters.
The depth charges did not intend to damage the target, but were meant only as a warning.
Although the unknown submarine has not been identified yet, the Finnish authority started an investigation about this incident, which is expected to conclude sometime during May.
Last October another unknown identity submarine, was spotted off the coast of Stockholm the capital of Sweden.
For six days the Swedish Navy was trying to locate and intercept the unknown submarine without luck.
According to the unofficial estimates from defense analysts, the unknown boat was a Russian mini-submarine that observed the multinational naval exercise ‘Northern Archer’, in which Swedish, Dutch, Danish and Polish naval units met up for training, including anti-submarine warfare.
Incidents like these have not been recorded in the Baltic Sea, since the days of the Cold War, when Soviet submarines were trying regularly to approach the Swedish coasts in order to collect information.