Ormestad 27/6 2020. Heatwave and sweet thermoclines

Hi and ho! 

Peacock feather duster worm, a tube dwelling species of marine worms.

This weekend me and my buddies decided to go out in the "nice" weather for a whole day of diving and bbq on the beach. Said and done, we decided to go to Ormestad, the best land diving wall in all of the Gullmar fjord. When we got there we realized how sweltering hot it was (32 C, while not much for many countries, is rather hot for us Swedes), but nonetheless we were determined to dive. So we kitted up as quickly as possible and rushed to the waters in order to escape the heat.

Dive 1: 

Depth: 26 m , Time: 47 min, Temp: 9 °C

Devonshire cup coral

Me and my buddy decided to dive the main attraction of Ormestad, namely the wall. so we swam out to it and started descending. When we hit 5 m, it was like hitting a wall of cold air as we penetrated the thermocline, which was rather shallow this dive. It went from 20 C waters to sub 10 C waters almost immediately, which was a nice escape from the sweltering heat up on the surface, the visibility also became so much better, going from about 3 to about 10 m. We kept descending, following the wall, photographing as we went. As always, the wall of Ormestad just kept giving, with huge amounts of Peacock feather duster worms, sealoch anemones and other organisms. As we lay on about 25 m depth, I saw some of the other divers in our group coming our way, quite the distance below us (maybe about 5 m), when they passed underneath us, their bubbles unfortunately silted the wall for us as there was a slight concave shape on the all between us, but such is life. Me and my buddy turned around and swam back at about 120 bars left, as we had decided upon on the surface.

When we got up on land again, we took off all the gear and prepared for some nice bbq.

A school of Herring with some nice ambient lighting

Dive 2:

Depth: 16 m, Time: 55 min, Temp 9 °C

After bbq, and some resting to digest the food, we decided to once again get into the water. This time the plan was to keep it a bit more shallow, while diving on the same wall. So said and done, we kitted up and began swimming towards the cliff once more. We descended in a fashion similar to the previous dive and began following the wall. As i used a different tank than usual, i was a bit "off" in my trim, but it was manageable. On this dive I photographed some different species of starfish, including a Henricia. sp starfish, as we were swimming back, we both spied a large male of Cuckoo wrasse, but alas, it was impossible to photograph, I did however manage to get a somewhat decent photo of one of the females that was hiding in a crevice, so there is that :)

As we got up, we heard that it was starting to rumble in the distance, signaling that there was a thunderstorm coming in, so we packed our stuff quickly and finished up in good time before it all broke loose 

Henricia. sp, 

All in all, it was a super nice dive day, even if the surface temperature was pure torture this day in a drysuit.

So until next time. Keep on swimming!

Female Cuckoo wrasse, not as colourful as the male, but a nice beauty nonetheless