Skår 14/11 2020, Troubles and bubbles.

Hi and ho!

As the autumn is going strong, the days are getting shorter and shorter, meaning night diving is getting easier and easier to do. So, this week me and my buddies decided to shift things around a bit and go to a site we don't go to as often for some reason. The diving spot of this weekend was decided to be Skår, the site furthest out in the fjord of our dive spots. We arrived at the dive spot and met up with our other friends that was to dive with us, got our gear out and set up, divided into buddy pairs and set out for the first dive of the evening.

The North sea tube anemone, a common species on the soft bottoms.

Dive 1:

Depth: 27 m, Time: 44 min, Temp: 11 °C

We waded out in the water until we were about waist deep, at which point, we donned our scuba fins and started swimming out until we reached a point where we couldn't see the bottom anymore. We began descending, and that is where the first troubles started. My buddy had problems descending, but after a little while they managed to start sinking. We descended in a relaxed fashion, signalled "OK" when getting visual of the bottom and started swimming to the right, following the slope and the walls. As we were swimming, and I photographing, my main light started to act up, blinking and dimming randomly, sometimes turning itself off, a problem that persisted throughout the dives, I had to fiddle with that every now and then. When we hit turning pressure, we turned around and began going more shallow and back towards the starting point. At about 20 m, while I was photographing something, my buddy signalled that something was wrong. I looked up and saw that they were starting to float upwards, what ensued was a quick session of dragging down and stabilizing, before I signaled that we were ending the dive by going upwards following the bottom. We continued swimming upwards, while I kept a somewhat closer eye on my buddy. At about 10 m, my buddy started floating upwards again, so I grabbed them while they were looking for a rock to hold onto, as to not float up again, after we found a suitable rock, we leisurely swam upwards to our safety stop and stayed there for the 3 minutes a regular safety stop takes. We ended as soon as the safety stop was done and surfaced. At the surface we did a quick analysis of what went wrong, and came to the conclusion that my buddy had changed to another kind of undersuit, which messed up their buoyancy. We swam onto shore, got up and got ready for a nice surface intervall.

Angular crab ready for a fight

Dive 2:

Depth: 30 m, Time: 38 min, Temp: 11 °C

After a surface intervall with discussions and coffee, me and my buddy got ready for the second dive of the evening. This time, my buddy had added 2 kg of lead to their system, which made the descent much easier this time. We swam out and started descending almost immediately after making sure everything was OK (well except my light that is). After getting visual of the seafloor, we started following the slope downwards and to the right once more, this time going slightly deeper than the earlier dive. As we were swimming, the second dive pair signalled us to come and look at something. Turns out that something was a Norway lobster hiding in it's burrow in the soft bottom, however, due to to my lamp acting up, I could not photograph this one. Soon after this, we started to near the NDL, so in order to keep somewhat better margins, me and my buddy ascended a few meters before we continued to follow the walls and slopes. As we were swimming, my buddy signalled me that they saw something, I turn my head, and behold, there was an Angular crab sitting on the cliff wall right beside me, so I started photographing this specific individual. After i felt I was done, we continued until we hit turn pressure and turned around. We swam upwards following the slopes and soon hit the safety stop. While laying on the safety stop, I spent some time photographing a Baltic prawn that had come wandering into my line of sight. We ended the dive soon after and got up, turns out I had navigated rather wrong, and we were a bit further from the landing point than I thought.

All in all, it was a nice night diving evening, even if  I have realized that I need to buy a new dive light very very soon.

So until next time! Keep on Swimming!

Baltic prawn out and about on the sand at night.