Hi and ho!
This weekend was a warm one, with temperatures in the 20s all weekend long and clear skies. As we had decided to upon diving with a newer diver that didn't have much of their own gear, we choose Släggö as the dive site of the weekend. This due to Släggö having a dive shop close by where one can rent suits and gear.
Either way, we got to the site, had a bit of trouble finding a parking lot due to the super nice weather making people come to Lysekil, with their cars, taking up precious parking spots for us divers close to Släggö. Got our gear out and kitted up for the dives of the day.
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| Common dragonet resting in the sand. |
Dive 1:
Depth 29 m, Time 54 min, Temp: 10 °C
On the surface, my pair and another buddy pair decided to dive together for a bit, as my buddy had recently changed the boots on their drysuit, and was about to check if they leaked, and if they did leak, check if the leak was severe enough to abort the dive. As we got in, we immediately realized that the visibility was on the bad side, not the worst, but not good either. After a little bit of diving, they signalled that they were indeed leaking into the boots, but not severe enough to abort the dive, so we signalled to the other pair that we were to split into the two pairs and continue with our dive plans (as far as we plan our dives at least). Me and my buddy continued following the slope downwards. At about 16 m depth, we hit the thermocline, which was marked with a very clear layer between the water masses. After breaking through this thermocline, the visibility got better with the colder water masses. We soon found the pipes that goes from Släggö and out on the deep soft bottom, which we spent some time around before the NDL time was starting to run low. Not that many animals was out this day, so most photos on this dive was of sessile species. These included Devonshire cup coral, hydroids and dead man's fingers, but some motile species like Common dragonet, swimming crabs and squat lobsters were also found. At 25 minutes we turned around and started swimming back, right then we met the other buddy pair as they were on their way back too.
We surfaced at 54 minutes, got up and got ready for a nice surface intervall in the sun.
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| Short horn sculpin, vibrant colour variant |
Dive 2:
Depth 27m, Time 46 min, Temp: 10 °C
After a surface intervall, we did a slight shift in the buddy pairs, as two of us didn't feel like, or couldn't do a second dive due to various reasons. So me and my previous buddy paired up with one different buddy each and got ready to dive in these new pairs. Me and my new buddy jumped into the water and swam out towards the cliff wall before starting to descend. After descending i found that i in my hurry had forgotten to attach the inflator to the drysuit, so i did a quick attaching while and hopefully that didn't mess up the internals of the hose or inflator too much. We continued following the slope downwards, photographing and hanging out as we did. After reaching the thermocline, we slowed down a bit, taking it easy while following the slope and the wall outwards. On this dive, we saw two Greater spider crabs with a blueish gray carapace colour, something I have seldom seen before. After a while, it became time to turn around, so that we did, following the wall on the way back. Right before we got to our safety stop, my buddy signalled me that they saw something underneath a rock at 9 m. Turned out to be a rather big european lobster, which I tried to get a good photo of, to no avail.
We surfaced at 46 minutes, got up and out of our gear, and ready to start going home.
All in all, the day was really good, if a bit warm due to the clear skies and summer temperatures.
So until next time! Keep on swimming!
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| Devonshire cup coral with a nice profile |
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