akvatoria.nnov.ru was the website of the Nizhny Novgorod diving club “Akvatoria” (Water Area), also styled “Akvatoria NN”. According to the description on its home page, the club taught scuba diving and spearfishing, sold and rented out equipment, and kept its own fishing and hunting lodge on the Cheboksary Reservoir[2]. The early version of the site called itself “AKVATORIA — Nizhny Novgorod Scuba Diving Club”[1], while the later one opened with the line “The ‘Akvatoria’ Club — diving and spearfishing in the Nizhny Novgorod region”[2]. The first snapshot of the domain in the web archive is dated 24 May 2003[1], the last one 19 June 2025[4].

The first version: 2003

The earliest surviving snapshot of the home page, taken on 24 May 2003, caught the site in the form of a short calling card. The page heading read “AKVATORIA — Nizhny Novgorod Scuba Diving Club”, and the whole of the surviving text came down to a menu of six items: “About the company”, “News”, “Equipment”, “Services”, “Photo gallery”, “Directions”[1]. Neither an address nor telephone numbers appear in the preserved text, although the “Directions” item shows that the club did have a place its customers came to.

The later version: club, training, shop

Exactly when the site was rebuilt our snapshots do not show: there are none between 2003 and 2018. Judging by the copyright notice in the footer — “Copyright 2007—2011 NKPP [Nizhny Novgorod Scuba Diving Club] ‘Akvatoria’ — diving, spearfishing, holiday lodge” — the later version took shape no earlier than 2007[2].

The menu of this version consisted of the items “News”, “Events”, “Photo gallery”, “Question & Answer”, “Tips” and “Contacts”; a separate group held five sections about the club’s actual business: “The Akvatoria Club”, “Holiday lodge”, “Dive training”, “Spearfishing” and “Equipment shop”[2]. The browser window title, meanwhile, was stuffed with keywords — “Diving, Spearfishing, Diving equipment, Dive training, Fishing lodge”: the same line stood both in the page description and in its keywords[4].

According to the text of the home page, the diving club “Akvatoria NN” had existed since 1999. Its main lines of activity were given as: training in scuba diving under the international PADI and KMAS systems and under the Russian ROSTO KPDR system (“the confederation of underwater activities of Russia”) with the issue of international certificates; the sale and rental of equipment for diving and spearfishing; the organisation of holidays at its own fishing and hunting lodge “Ostrov Razin” (Razin Island); the organisation of spearfishing and diving; and, finally, “the development of a reasonable and careful attitude towards the surrounding nature and the aquatic environment”[2].

The same page gave summary figures: the club had “turned out more than 1,000 qualified divers” and organised club trips “all over the world” — the Black and Red Seas, the Maldives, Madagascar — while outings to open water, the page reported, took place almost every weekend[2]. The president of the club is named as Viktor Mikhailovich Aksenov, a scuba diving instructor since 1998 who had given more than 30 years to spearfishing[2].

Above the account of the club, the home page carried a “SALE” block — a clearance sale of older-model and second-hand underwater equipment: scuba sets, underwater torches, spearguns, wet suits, underwater cameras[2].

The “Ostrov Razin” lodge

As a separate asset of the club the site named the fishing and hunting holiday lodge “Ostrov Razin” on the Cheboksary Reservoir: besides spearfishing there were, by the description on the home page, year-round fishing and corporate retreats, and the page called the lodge itself “unique”[2]. This is the only precise geographical reference that the later version of the site gave outright: neither a city, nor an address, nor a telephone number appears in the preserved text of the home page[2].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

In our Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating the site is recorded through the nn.ru directory. In the directory’s classifier it stood in the section “Firms (Enterprises) : Recreation and entertainment : Active recreation”; its card described it as “training in underwater swimming(diving) under the PADI system, spearfishing, equipment for diving and spearfishing, repair of scuba diving equipment”, while the rating column read “none” — whereas its neighbours in the same section did have scores[5]. The equipment repair promised by the card is nowhere to be found in the preserved snapshots of the home page. The site never came to hold any points in Counter.nn.ru, and it does not appear in the lists of participants or of the voting of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day either[6]. This was not a media project but the calling-card site of a narrow specialist club, and it held its place in the Nizhny Novgorod Internet not by traffic but by longevity: the domain lived for 22 years.

How it ended

The later version of the site froze. The web archive snapshots of 15 June 2018, 2 April 2022 and 19 June 2025 contain word for word the same home page text — with the same sale block and the same copyright notice, broken off at 2011[2][3][4]. That is, for at least the last seven years of its existence the site was not updated, although it remained accessible: the “News” and “Events” sections went on hanging in the menu.

At our latest probe the domain no longer served the site: the address opened the standard web server welcome page — “Welcome to nginx!”. The content has been taken down from the domain and the domain itself has been left empty; the probe found no redirect to a new address.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2018 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2022 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Home page, 2025 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory classifier, section “Firms (Enterprises) : Recreation and entertainment : Active recreation”, 2003 (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day voting results, 2004 (archive)