Ormestad 5/9 2020. Into the abyss and back again.

Sealoch anemone, a closer look :)

Hi and ho!

This weekend me and my buddies went to Ormestad and the great walls that can be found there. This time around, we had gathered quite a sizable number of people that wanted to go diving. a whole 9 people, including an instructor of mine. So we got to Ormestad, picked the gear out of the car (after I accidentally bumped into a log, managed to scrape off some paint off the car), carried it to the jetty at the shore, divided into dive pairs and got ready to head out into the water.

The great wall of Ormestad, covered in various organisms

Dive 1: 

Depth: 35 m, Time: 60 min Temp: 16 °C

I paired up with my buddy, and planed to go quite deep this first dive, we got into the water, swam out to the wall and descended when we realized that the winds were not favourable. We descended in a orderly fashion straight down towards the abyss. As we descended, we felt that there was a current going outwards from 15 m to about 30 m. So we got carried by the current while descending for quite a bit. While I was photographing some other stuff, my buddy signalled to me to come and look at something, so I came over, and lo and behold, a Plated squat lobster, the first I've ever seen of this species. So i spent a minute trying to photograph that one. After a while, we started nearing deco, so we started to ascend a bit in order to go into deco. As I hit turning pressure I signaled to my buddy and we began swimming back, Not much occurred on the swim back really, saw some lobsters hiding among the rubble and in the crevices of the cliff. As we were laying on the safety stop, my buddy and I decided to shoot some SMB, as it is good to train for real situations. said and done, we both launched our buoys and started ascending as we retrieved the lines for the buoys. As we did this, my buddy got a lion's mane jellyfish right in their face, and promptly dropped their double-ender which I saw and retrieved immediately. As we got up, we took off our gear and enjoyed our surface intervall with food and drinks.

The plated squat lobster (Munida rugosa), hiding in a crevice

Dive 2:

Depth: 28m, Time: 59 min. Temp: 16 °C

After a nice surface intervall with food, drinks and chatting, we prepared to go into the water once more. This time we did a bit of a switch between the pairs, me and my buddy got a newer diver with us as their previous buddy wanted to do another kind of dive. We planned to do another dive at the wall, this time a bit shallower though. As we got there, it became clear that the newer diver was having problems, too much weight, and he could not stay afloat, thus we had to abort the dive and get him to the surface so he could end the dive. When we got to the surface and got his buoyancy under control, he told us that he just was going to head back to shore and that we should continue with our dive. So we kept an eye on him for a bit to see that he got to safer, more shallow waters, before we began our second dive for real. I had no camera with me this dive as I was aware that there was a risk of problems occurring with our second buddy, which did come true. So anyways, after seeing that he got to safer waters and that the dive leader on land saw them, me and my buddy started to descend once more. There was still that current at about 15 and downwards, so we let it carry us for a bit, looking in the crevices and rubble along the cliff. At about 26 m, there was a rather sizable overhang, all covered in tube worms, anemones and ascidians. As with the previous dive, we started ascending as we were nearing deco time. So that we did, as we ascended, the current had increased in intensity, which made the swim back a bit of a slog before we got above the current. As we were laying on the safety stop, I started to feel the nature call, so after we had our 3 minutes on the safety stop, I signaled to my buddy that nature was calling and i needed to get up pretty soon, so that we did, and I got to rush and take care of business. 

All in all, it was a very nice dive day, much better than expected, especially with the weather forecast telling of rain, yet there was none.

So until next time! Keep on swimming!

A dead man's fingers coral