Släggö 12/9 2020 Rain clouds, sunshine and silt clouds.

Hi and ho! 

This weekend, me and my buddies went to Släggö in Lysekil, as we reasoned that "it was going to be rainy and windy, so might as well go to a site where we can change into our dive gear under dry roof" so said and done, As we arrived in Släggö, we came right as there was a pause in the rain, so we got into the gear quickly, divided into pairs and got ready to get into the waters. As we had two relatively new divers with us, we divided the pairs so that we were one experienced and one newer diver in each pair.  

Common dragonet trying to camouflage itself on the sand, could have fooled me for sure :)

Dive 1: Depth: 25m, Time: 52 min, Temp: 16 °C

Me and my buddy jumped into the water and started swimming outwards as soon as we had gotten our camera gears under control. As the winds were blowing straight into the Släggö bay, it soon became evident that it was futile to swim very far in the surface, so instead, we made the signs for the surface organisation and started descending into the waters. As we descended, the wave motions calmed down almost immediately, so we kept going down and outwards, following the cliffs and the bottom curve. As we swam down, we spent the time photographing and filming on the way. The visibility was not that great this time, as I believe both the winds and presence of other divers on this site, was contributing to a somewhat great amount of silt in the water. On this dive, there was a lot of crabs, Gadiform fish (cod's coalfish and pollacks) and some lobsters. As we were diving, suddenly it became much lighter in the waters around us, which suggested that there was no more rain up on the surface, and that the sun had peeked through the clouds. After a while, we hit turning pressure and started swimming back, following the wall back. As we surfaced, we saw that the weather had turned into clear skies and that the sun was really shining, even though the winds were still going strong. We got up in a orderly fashion, took off our gear and went to get a late lunch at the pizzeria across the street from the dive center, as we always do when we dive in Lysekil.

Sandy swimming crab, digging down into the mud and silt on the bottom

Dive 2: Depth: 30 m, Time:51 min , Temp: 16 °C

After a late lunch/early dinner, it was time to get back into the water, by then the winds had picked up even more, which was a non-issue really as we got into the water. The dive pairs this time was the same as the last dive. We jumped in, swam out to the cliff and descended into the water to avoid the surface waves. This time we followed the bottom downwards, aiming to reach the 30 m depth, on the way, we encountered the "wreck" on the mud slope, in reality, it is a small boat that I believe the dive center went and sank there so to have some thing to dive on.

After looking a bit around the boat, we continued downwards, following the bottom. At 30 m, we encountered a weird platform, which was covered in Sabellid tube worms (Most likely Sabella pavonina). At this point, we stopped and I was spending some time photographing the swimming crabs that were hiding in the mud. After a little while, it became time to start ascending as we were nearing no deco limits, so we did  just that, as we came to about 25 m, we encountered a huge cloud of silt, most likely from other divers. This cloud was so thick and large, that we both lost sight of each other for a little bit. Either way, we managed to get through and dove a bit on the wall for a few minutes before we once again were nearing deco limits. When there was 3 minutes left, I signaled to my buddy that we needed to "go up" but apparently he misunderstood it, and continued, into another huge cloud of silt, where he became disoriented and i had to go and get him, I signaled once again, this time with very exaggerated  movements that we were to "go up", this time he understood, and we ascended a few meters until the the no deco time was going up again. We followed the wall, photographing and filming as we went, on the wall, there was a lot of Dead man's fingers corals, as well as crabs sitting in the crevices. Right before we ended the dive, I spotted some rather sizable Ballan wrasse harassing a crab for some reason, so I spent some time in the shallow to look at that before we surfaced.

All in all it was nice dive day, even if the wind was somewhat rough, and the visibility was less than ideal, but not unexpected for the conditions that day.

So until next time! Keep on Swimming!

Dead man's fingers, in some patches they are really abundant