Släggö 19/9 2020, Stubborn gear and semi-night dives.

Hi and ho! 

This weekend, me and my buddies were to meet up with another diving club in Lysekil for some diving and hanging out, unfortunately, this did not come to pass, as our timings did not fit with each others. So instead of going to a new place on the north side of Lysekil, we instead went to Släggö, a safe card when it comes to diving. As we were gearing up, i noticed that one of my regulators was leaking air, and breathing did not fix it, so i had to go up to the dive center and ask them for help, which they did, as they are a really helpful dive center :). When I got back down, one of my buddies had a problem with their suit zipper, it didn't want to close, turns out the zipper teeth was completely broken, so he had to go up and rent a suit from the dive center. After many But's and If's, we finally got into the water, and got ready to start the dive.

Black goby, letting itself be photographed

Dive 1: Depth: 29 m, Time: 57 min, Temp: 16 °C

We swam out from the pier and quite quickly decided to descend into the water, as our land personell was following us with a drone, hoping to catch us doing the descent on photo i presume? Either way, we descended and started following the bottom downwards. As we swam, we started to see that the visibility was getting worse and worse, at below 25 m, there was a significant limitation to our range of vis, being about 4 m at most maybe. As we came to the max depth, we found the "wind protection" structure that can be found a bit out from the cliff walls on the soft bottom slope. After a while, we began running low on "no deco" time and thus promptly ascended to shallower depth, as we got above 24 m, the waters cleared up, and the visibility became around 7 m. As we reached this point, it was also time to turn back, as I was hitting "turn pressure", so we followed the wall back, photographing as we went. As we were nearing the starting point once more, we started to see more and more divers in the water, we promptly decided to end the dive as one diver "bombed" down right to our side. As we got up, we understood, that there was a diving course going on right there and then. So we got up, got out of our gear and went to the pizzeria for a nice surface intervall and early dinner.

Super closeup of the Great scallop, notice the eyes on the rim of the shell?

Dive 2: Depth 29 m, Time: 58 min, Temp: 16 °C

After a nice surface intervall, with food, coffee and hanging out at the dive center, we got ready to get into the water once more. This time, we were only two, as one of my buddies, the one that had to borrow a suit, decided that one dive was enough for the day, they had gotten a bit chilled during the last dive. So me and my second buddy got ready and jumped into the waters. Once again, we followed the slope downwards, as it was getting darker due to the time of the day, there was a lot more life in the water during this dive, with crabs running about, and fish being much less skittish. As we dove down, the visibility had improved somewhat, even if it was still a bit dusty down below 25m. We turned towards the cliff wall and started following it outwards, as we did so, i suddenly spotted a great scallop out and about on top of the sand, with it's tentacles out and the shell opened. So I started photographing it real close up. Soon after that, i hit turn pressure, and we began swimming back, following the cliff. As it was much darker in the water now, even the gobies let themselves be photographed somewhat, so I spent some time doing that on the way back. As we neared the pier, we decided to end the dive there and go up, as the surface people probably wanted to go home soon by then. 

All in all it was a super nice dive day, even if there was some problems with gear in the beginning, but hey, at least the weather was nice and calm.

So until next time! Keep on swimming!

Spotted dragonet, somewhat well camouflaged against the seafloor