Jordfall 30/5 2021 Night and day.

 Hi and ho!

This weekend was a very nice one, with clear skies and shining sun. The site for this weekend was Jordfall marina, due some other of our friends also going there for diving. We arrived at the site, got our gear out to the benches and started preparing for the first dive. As the weather was nice, it was also rather warm, marking the start of the summer diving season.

The Nodding hydroid (Corymorpha nutans) sometimes occur in great aggregations

Dive 1:

Depth: 23 m, Time: 55 min, Temp: 12 °C

Me and my buddy decided to dive the cliff wall on the left side of Jordfall, so we swam out to the end of the cliff, when we reached a spot we deemed good enough for descending. As we descended, we realized that there was a brown freshwater layer on the top and down to about 7m, effectively creating a lid where sunlight had problems penetrating into the water column. Making this a semi-night dive from the start, even if the sun was shining strongly on the surface. Me and my buddy swam along the wall, looking in nooks and crannies, as well as on the soft bottom. On the soft bottom we found a lot of Nodding hydroids (Corymorpha nutans), and among these, a huge number of nudibranchs, which turned out to be the nudibranch Cumanotus beaumonti a species that feed upon the hydroid and apparently is rather uncommon to see. As we kept swimming, i noticed some small dots flitting about, after a closer look, it turned out to be small bobtail squids. After trying to photograph them for a bit, not very successfully, we kept swimming until about 25 minutes, when i signalled it was time to turn around. So that we did, we followed the wall back and surfaced at 55 minutes, got out of the water and got ready for a nice surface interval in the sun.

Cumanotus beaumonti, apparently a uncommon species of nudibranch

Dive 2:

Depth 31m, Time: 46 min, Temp: 12 °C.

After a surface interval, it was time to get into the water again. This time, we also brought one of our other friends who wanted to do a second dive this day. This time we had decided to go deep over the soft bottom. So we swam out to the edge of the jetty before we started descending. We swam out over the soft bottom slope, looking around for critters on the mud bottom. Down on the deep part, one of my buddies signalled me to look at something, it turned out to be a Norwegian red sea cucumber, a species that i have been searching for, for a rather long time now. So yay! now i have it. We also saw one of the Fireworks anemones during this dive, the one at 24 m depth.

We surfaced at 46 minutes, cutting a bit shorter as i had rather little NDL time left, but hey sometimes it be like that.

All in all, we had a really nice dive day, and the species we saw this time was out of the expected, but then again, always expect the unexpected in Gullmarsfjorden!

So until next time! Keep on swimming!

Norwegian red sea cucumber (Parastichopus tremulus)