Hällebäck 19/4 2020. Aeolids and spring times

Hi and ho!

This weekend me and my dive buddies decided to change things up for a bit, as we have dived in the same spots for a while now, we decided to take another of our regular haunts, namely Hällebäck, a diving spot where we have seen many a king crab before, and that is relatively easy to access.
The weather was extremely nice, with shining sun, warm air temperatures and almost no wind.
We kitted up on the shore and prepared for a day of diving.

Dive 1

The White Sea Urchin (Gracilechinus acutus) has rather long spines

Depth: 28 m, Temp: 8°C, Time 33 min.
Me and my buddy swam out until we decided that we were far enough out for the descent. We descended in a orderly fashion to about 7 m before we could even see the bottom. When we could see the bottom, we slowed our descent down a bit and began following the bottom out to greater depth, at about 20 m, we found the cliff wall where many of our earlier observations of Norway king crab has been done, but this day me and my buddy saw none. We swam along the cliff, photographing as we went, when about 15 minutes had passed, i signaled for us to turn around and go back, as we had decided beforehand that we would try and keep the dive to about 30 minutes. When we reached the slope at about 15 m, we followed it diagonally until we reached the safety stop at 3 m, where we spent some time off-gassing as well as photographing Orange-Brown Aeolids, a type of nudibranch, that lives on soft bottoms and among Eelgrass.
When the safety stop was done, we ascended to the surface and swam back the last bit to land.

Devonshire cup coral (Caryophyllia smithii), small and unassuming, yet very abundant in some places

Dive 2:
Depth 9 m. Temp: 8°C, Time 57 min.

The Bluefire Jellyfish (Cyanea lamrarcki), Beautiful but painful to touch

After a 1 h surface interval, with some warming up in the sun, me and my buddy decided for a second dive. on this dive we decided to go to the right side of Hällebäck in stead, where it is a bit more steep, we also decided to keep a bit more shallow in order to search for nudibranches. Said and done, we descended in a orderly fashion and began swimming to the right, following the bottom. But alas, there was no nudibranch to see among the algae and kelp on the right, so when about 20 minutes had passed, we decided to turn around and swim back. when we surfaced again, my buddy had a lot of lost fishing lures in his hand, so we decided to go in to land and throw the old lures on the pier before going for a quick dive to the left instead. said and done, we descended to the left instead, however, at this point i had some problems equalizing, so i had to slow down for a bit. when i got that under control, we just swam around photographing nudibranches. After a while, we decided to go up again and end the dive.

All in all, this was one of the best dive days i've had in a long while.

So until next time, Keep on Swimming!

Orange-Brown Aeolid (Aeolidiella glauca), a nudibranch often found in eelgrass beds