Släggö 19/6 2021 Diving with a chance of showers

 Hi and ho

This weekend we decided to meet up with a couple of friends that live close to and in Lysekil, so Släggö was once again the logical option for a dive site. The weather forecast told of thunder and rain, which made our choices of dive spots a bit smaller, we needed roof to hide from the rain after all. So not much to talk about there really, we did as we always do, get our gear ready, pair up and getting ready to dive.

Devonshire cup coral, a side view

Dive 1

Depth: 26 m, Time: 57 min. Temp: 13 °C

At first, we were going in two pairs of buddies, as one usually does, however, due to unforeseen circumstances, we had to do a quick re-arranging of the pairs, and dive in a pair of 3 instead. Also, one of my gloves broke as i was going into the water, so I had to go up and do a quick change of gloves, changing it to a wet-glove instead for this dive. Either way, we swam out into the bay and close to the cliff before we started descending. the goal of this dive was to look for dragonets of different kinds, so we tried to get towards the deeper soft bottoms, where they usually like to hang out, as quick as possible. In the surface, the visibility was somewhat bad, about 3 m of visibility, but that cleared up as soon as one got down a few meters. At 20 m, we hit the thermocline, and the visibility cleared up even further. Here, we started to encounter Common dragonets, in particular a beautiful male, which one of my buddies started to photograph while hung around for a bit, photographing some other animals, including some female common dragonets. 

Near the end of the dive, my second buddy signalled me to look at something in a crevice, turned out to be a large lobster, which did not match the description of our regular European one in my eyes, so I tried to photograph it as much as possible, but none of the photos turned out useable due to it hiding too deep in the crevice.

We surfaced at 57 minutes, got up, and got ready for a nice surface interval.

As we began doffing our gear, it started raining quite heavily for a few minutes.

Female common dragonet, not as colourful as the male

Dive 2

Depth 30m, Time 65 min, Temp: 13°C

After a surface intervall with food, talking and me changing my dryglove, it once again became time to get into the waters. This time, we went in pairs of two, as our original plan was, and right as we were donning our gear, it started to rain, again. Though, as we were in our drysuits, it didn't matter too much really.

We got into the water and me and my buddy swam to the cliff before starting to descend into the water. The goal was once again to look for dragonets on this dive. As we swam along the wall, my buddy started following something, after a closer look, it turned out to be a lobster out in the open, something you don't usually see during the day, though this specific one was pretty big, and the waters pretty dark at this point, so maybe that was the reason for the lobster to be out and about. Either way, we followed it for a little bit, before we left it be and continued to swim towards the depth. When we reached the deeper soft bottom, we started to encounter swimming crabs, as well as common dragonets once more. Not much else was of note on this part of the dive, we turned around at the half tank point and started swimming back. As we reached the shallow waters, I didn't pay attention to where I was swimming and almost got a jellyfish smack dab in the face, i managed to avoid it by getting really flat towards the bottom. As I did this, I saw a small shape sticking out of the sand, as I got closer, i realized it was a Greater weever, a species i know occurs in the area, but is one i hadn't seen yet. So i spent some time photographing it, before i signalled to my buddy to come and photograph it too. After a little while, we left the fish alone and kept swimming back. We surfaced at 65 minutes, got up and doffed our gear, satisfied with the dives of the day.

All in all, the day was a nice dive day, even if the weather did leave some things to wish for, and the chaotic beginning of it.

So until next time! Keep on swimming!

Greater weever, the Swedish equivalent to a Stonefish of warmer waters