The wreck site, due south of the Turku archipelago, is a protected area and unauthorized diving is forbidden there, but an official state investigation in summer 2023 followed an authorized private sector one the preceding summer.

The tragedy of the September 28, 1994, disaster is the largest peacetime maritime disaster not only in the Baltic, but in European waters generally.

The ferry, en route from Tallinn to Stockholm, sank in about half an hour in the small hours of September 28. Of the 989 people aboard, 852 perished, and just 137 survived.

Over the intervening three decades, investigations into the causes of the disaster have yielded various theories and discoveries, but the questions of why and how still persist to the present.

The first official investigation was conducted by a joint commission consisting of members from Sweden, Finland, and Estonia, the three countries most heavily affected by the tragedy, and starting on the very same day the sinking took place.

That final report, published three years later, identified the detachment of the ship's bow visor in heavy seas as the main cause of the sinking.

However, some were unconvinced by the committee's conclusions unconvincing, and this in turn fueled the development of several alternative theories or even conspiracy theories.

Theories emerged that questioned the bow visor's detachment as the sole factor, with a possible explosion or a collision with an unidentified object being among alternative explanations.

There were, too, claims made that the cargo aboard the MS Estonia might have been included classified military equipment or related components

One of the proponents of this theory was German lawyer Henning Witte, who suggested that the KGB or its successor orchestrated an explosion to prevent an arms shipment.

Witte claimed Swedish authorities were complicit.

Then in 2000, a team organized by American wreck enthusiast and venture capitalist Gregg Bemis (1928–2020) – who in the late 1960s purchased the rights to the wreck of the Lusitania for a thousand pounds sterling – and German journalist Jutta Rabe conducted their own unofficial investigation. This included diving to the Estonia wreck, which lies on the seabed in over 100 meters of water.

While the wreck has been covered over with pebbles, plans to encase it in something more substantial like concrete have not borne fruit.

That team discovered scratch marks and mound of sand which they believed were recent, as well as a dark line they interpreted as the edge of a hole.

Uno Laur, the head of the Estonia International Investigation Commission in 1996–1997 said this team "only ... managed to get a blurry picture of some pile of sand. Aside from that, they had planned to inspect the entire ship, even the engine room and lower decks, but we now know they didn't even enter the ship. I don't quite understand that."

Sweden's public broadcaster in 2004 reported that military equipment had been transported aboard the MS Estonia in the couple of weeks leading up to the disaster, specifically on September 14 and 20, 1994.

An investigation was launched in Estonia the following year, with then chief prosecutor Margus Kurm appointed leader and tasked with determining whether Estonian authorities were aware of such shipments and if they had been coordinated with relevant agencies.

"The main conclusion was this: It is impossible to fully confirm or to refute any of the theories. The available evidence, particularly the testimonies of survivors, supports a wide range of versions of events on the sinking," Kurm told ETV investigative show "Pealtnägija" back in 2019.

This, Kurm noted, was not of much solace to relatives of the victims.

Speaking to another ETV show, "Suud puhtaks," also in 2019, Kurm admitted said he and all those on the committee had: "Let down all those dissatisfied people. Indeed, we failed—I failed to convince the government that the causes of the sinking are not clear."

Despite years of pressure from the victims' relatives and survivors to reopen the investigation, no new inquiry was launched, and even Kurm's frank admission in 2019 went largely ignored.

However, all that soon changed.

In September 2020, a documentary aired on Swedish TV which included footage, obtained illegally – the wreck is a grave site – revealed a gaping hole in the starboard side of the Estonia's hull.

In early October of that year, the Estonian government proposed to Finland and Sweden that the three countries launch a joint new investigation of the Estonia disaster, with Rene Arikas, head of the safety investigation center, (OJK), appointed to lead it.

According to Arikas, that investigation, which began in 2021, started with enthusiasm and optimism that things could be concluded swiftly.

However, with a change in government in Estonia,* interest and focus began to wane, he said. "Interest gradually fell as it became more or less clear which direction the investigation was heading and what answers were coming. The issue lost its currency."

In November 2021, following underwater surveys and various modeling exercises had been carried out, an interim report was published, which largely recapitulated the central hypothesis of the 1997 investigation: The issue lay with the bow visor and the ship's technical condition.

Arikas said that conspiracy theories could not be investigated directly, though the findings indirectly addressed them in any case.

"The damage happened because the wreck is lying on its starboard side, while the middle section rests on a rocky outcrop, which has caused extensive damage to that starboard side," he said.

This is more visible now than it would have been earlier on, the expert continued.

"This has become more evident as the wreck has slid down the slope. We saw no evidence of any explosion, nor of an external object or another vessel involved," Arikas continued.

Arikas stepped down from the investigation in January 2023. By that point, the government had allocated €3.5 million towards it, though he stated that about €1.5 million more was still needed.

In January 2024, an additional €1.2 million was found for that purpose.

Arikas cited the reasons for his departure as a loss of interest from project partners, but remained hopeful about future prospects.

"I hope and I believe that the final report will provide answers for many people. And peace and clarity, and that also during the investigation, when we involved survivors of the Estonia and relatives, who sat with us as we worked, when we explained what we were seeing and why certain things happened as they did; in one case or another a lot of those who were with us in that moment said they now understood what happened, and why. That they had made peace with the catastrophe," Arikas concluded.

*That change in government saw the more populist-leaning EKRE-I-KE (EKRE, Isamaa, Center) coalition replaced by a new administration led by the Reform Party. In September 2020, Margus Kurm stated that the vessel most likely sank after a collision with a submarine.

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