Dyk-Leif 24/7 2021 Boat diving in the Väderöarna archipelago

 Hi and ho!

This weekend, me and some buddies went up to the Väderöarna (Weather islands) archipelago, one of the westernmost archipelagos in Sweden, far out in the sea. As it is so far out, the waters are much clearer and has higher salinity, which results in higher biodiversity. Higher biodiversity is something i like, both as a marine biologist and as a underwater photographer. Either way, we arrived somewhat late, but got our gear onto the boat in a orderly fashion, got ourselves on the boat and set out to the dive sites of the day.

Red cushion starfish, a beautiful specimen at that

Dive 1: Stora Sundskär

Depth: 30 m, Time: 60 min, Temp: 17 C

We were dropped off close to the cliff wall, where we almost immediately began descending, however, as we did, i discovered that my ring system was leaking due to something getting stuck in the space between the glove ring and the suit ring, so i had to signal that we had to go up, which my first buddy did get, but the second buddy in our group did not, so i had to signal a couple of times before they got it. We ascended quickly and got that fixed before we continued the dive again. We swam along the wall, with the cliff to our left side, at about 10-20 m depth there was a current going along the wall, so there was a bit of drifting going on. We kept descending for a bit until we hit our max depth, where we spent some time swimming along the wall, looking at the vibrant marine life around us. After a while, it became time to start going upwards again, mostly due to dwindling gas supply and dive time left. So we continued following the wall upwards a bit, encountering the current once more at about 20 m where we let it carry us for a bit. It was during this time, we came across a large area almost completely covered with Black brittle stars, uncountable numbers of them.

We surfaced at 60 min, got up in the dive boat, doffed our gear and got ready for the surface interval with lunch in the nice weather on one of the small islands.

Massive amounts of Black brittle stars (Ophiocomina nigra) covering the seafloor

Dive 2: Södra Ärholmen.

Depth: 27 m, Time: 46 min, Temp: 17 C

After a nice surface interval in the sun, with some swimming because the weather was so good. We got onto the boat and headed out for the second dive of the day. We jumped into the water and immediately descended, following a ravine downwards and outwards, as had been described on the boat. After a while, me and my buddies turned left, following the cliff wall. As we were swimming, i spotted something small and purple, with a closer look, it turned out to be a Violet sea slug (Edmundsella pedata), a species I have been looking for, for quite a while, so of course I had to stay and photograph it a little bit. We continued following the wall, taking it slowly and looking through nooks and crannies for critters. Soon after, I signalled that I had 50 bars left in my doubles, at which point we started to ascend, ending the dive so to say. We surfaced at 46 minutes, got onto the boat, rinsed our gear a bit and started to make ready to go back to the harbour again. Thus ending the dive day.

This was a super nice dive day, even if it is a bit expensive, it is all worth it for sure.

So until next time! Keep on swimming!

Violet sea slug, a small but colourful nudibranch