Smögen 15/5 2020. Sea hares and wave actions.

Hi and ho!

This week me and my buddies did a bit of a spontaneous dive trip to Smögen on Friday afternoon, we had originally planned to go earlier, however the weather seemed less than ideal due to strong winds from west. Nonetheless, we went out there after some convincing later in the afternoon/evening, as the bay where we planned to dive is a bit sheltered from westerly winds. After arriving, setting up the surface organization and kitting up, it was time to get into the water.


Dive 1:

Max depth 5,4 m. Temp: 10 °C. Time: 56 min.

Gas mantle ascidian, a small, simple, and unassuming creature

We jumped into the water from a small jetty in the bay where the dive center is located in Smögen, and swam out a few meters from the jetty as to avoid entanglement in the anchoring ropes of the jetty and then started descending. The waters were relatively clear and we followed a cliff wall outwards as we had decided upon on the surface while getting ready. As the weather outside of the sheltered bay was still somewhat windy, there was a lot of waves, which could be felt underwater as well as we were rather shallow. This motion made it a bit hard to lie still and shoot photographs as one was moving around a lot as a result of the wave energy in the waters.
We swam on for a while with me and my buddy trying to photograph the best we could as we went. I have to admit to my shame that it took way more time than necessary for me to even start to see the sea hares that was around in great abundances in the algae, i guess their camouflage do work rather well as they were very good at blending in among the brown, green and red algae. I did manage take some photos, however as it was hard to stay still, a important thing when doing macro photography, most of them came out blurry. When 30 minutes had passed, me and my buddy turned around and began swimming back as we had told surface that we would be down for 1 h maximum. We swam back in a slow and relaxed fashion, trying to photograph as we went.


All in all, it was a very nice dive trip :)

So until next time, Keep on swimming!

Dotted Sea hare, not a Nudibranch, but something quite closely related.