Monday, 10 May 2021

Släggö 9/5 2021. Dive helmets and bad visibility

US navy diving helmet on Släggö
 Hi and ho!

This weekend, due to the weather forecast telling of rain, me and my buddies decided to go to a site with a roof over the changing area, as to not get wet while getting into the dive gear. We choose Släggö, as it is easy access to facilities such as food, bathrooms and dry changing areas.

We kitted up, divided ourselves into pairs, and got ready to head out into the waters.

Dive 1: 

Depth: 26 m, Time: 45 min, Temp: 8 °C

Me and my buddy jumped into the water and started swimming out for a bit before starting to descend. As we descended, I saw that the visibility was less than ideal this day, mostly due to algal blooms and mixing of waters, we swam downwards, following the sloping of the bottoms, while keeping relatively close due to the limited visibility of the waters. This dive, few creatures were out and about, but we did find the dive helmet they put at Släggö recently. At about 25 min, we turned around and started going back towards the starting point. We surfaced at about 45 minutes and did a surface swim towards the entry point, got up and doffed the gear and prepared for a nice surface intervall.


A Shorthorn sculpin (Myoxocephalus scorpius) with a somewhat uncommon colouration

Dive 2:

Depth: 26m. Time: 47 min, Temp: 8 °C

For the second dive, we re-did the buddy pairs, as two didn't feel like a second dive, we had to quickly re-make the pairs once more right before the dive, as one in the other pair got a gear failure and had to can the dive unfortunately. Anyways, with the new buddy pair, we all swam out to a spot we deemed suitable for descending. We descended in a orderly fashion and followed the slope down once more. Yet again, the visibility left some things to wish for, but that's what you have to deal with at times. during this dive, I didn't photograph so much, as I had to keep an eye on what the others were doing due to the somewhat limited visibility. Either way, we turned around at about 20 minutes and started following the slope upwards. at about 13 m, one of my buddies signaled me to look at something on the bottom, turned out to be a very vividly coloured Shorthorn sculpin, which I stayed for a bit to photograph as much as i could. As we continued upwards, I spotted something on the bottom too, a King ragworm outside of it's burrow, which I of course had to photograph too.

We surfaced at 47 minutes, though as the others were climbing up, i did a weight check to see if i was correctly weighted, which i was :)

As we were packing up and preparing to go back to Gothenburg, the weather cleared up and got very nice... just perfect.

All in all, it was a nice dive day, even if the visibility left some things to wish for.

So until next time! Keep on Swimming! 


 Close-up photo of a King ragworm (Alitta virens)

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