29/3 2020 Back at it again!

Hi and ho!

It seems that i was mistaken in assuming that i would not be able to dive and photograph the way i usually do because i am attending a course. This weekend there was no practical exercises for the course, so me and some dive buddies decided to go out for a day of  "fun diving" as the weather was extremely nice, with shining sun and mild temperatures. We had decided on Jordfall as our destination. As there is a situation with the pandemic, we had decided to follow the recommendations of SSDF (Swedish diving association) and keep our diving safe and conservative so as to not have to use the emergency diving chamber on the hospital, and thus diverting precious resources from the people sick from COVID-19

Oaten pipe (Tubularia indivisa) a common type of hydroid

Dive 1:
Time: 39 min. Depth: 26 m. Temp: 5°C

Sea pen (Pennatula phosphorea), not a pen you can write with

On the first dive me and my buddy planned on going a bit deeper, as well as follow the cliff. We did our buddy check, in order to see if everything was as it should with the gear, then we went in and swam on the surface until we decided that we found a good spot to descend on. We descended in a normal manner, and during the descent we discovered that the vis of the water was rather bad overall, around 3 m at max, with the water being a green tint, which would indicate that the spring algae bloom has began, and that the vis will remain bad for quite a while. Anyways, me and my buddy began swimming towards the deeper waters, photographing while we swam, and hoping for better vis further down, but alas no such luck. After around 16 minutes, my buddy signaled that it was time to turn around and go upwards. so we turned around and swam back towards the shore. As both of us were photographers, we did not get very far from the starting point as we stopped to photograph something every few meters. When we got up, i had prepared hot drinks, which was very appreciated by my buddy

Black gooby (Gobius niger) in a crevice

Dive 2:
Time: 44 min. Depth: 16 m. Temp: 5-6°C

Bernahrd's Hermit crab (Pagurus bernhardus)
going about it's businesses.

After a good surface intervall with warm drink and some warming up in the sun, me and my buddy decided to go on the second dive. On this dive, the plan was to follow the wall once again, but this time we would go more shallow in order to keep it safe and also to find more stuff, the kind of stuff that usually hides in the crevices of rocks and cliffs. Said and done, we descended to around 14 m and followed the cliff wall down to 16m, in a similar pattern to the dive before, me and my buddy kept stopping every few meters to photograph something. After around 20 minutes, we decided to turn around and swim back towards the starting point.

All in all, this was a very good diving day, even if the vis could have been better.

Sand star (Astropecten irregularis) on the sand :)

So until next time, Keep on Swimming!