Hi and ho!
This weekend me and my dive buddy went to the Fossen camping dive spot, something that has become a bit of a regular occurrence now. The weather was nice, unexpectedly nice actually, as the forecast had told of clouds with a risk of rain, but no it was sunny the whole time while we were diving.
When we were setting up the gear, the first trouble occurred. I had recently changed to longhose on my primary regulator, this was to be the first time i was to use it. When pressurizing the setup, I realize that there is a leak somewhere where the hose connects to the reg, after a bit of unscrewing and fixing around, I come to the conclusion that the O-ring inside the hose is broken and need to be changed. What a perfect day to forget the save a dive kit with stuff like that back home, right? Either way, there is a dive center in the area, so that was quickly fixed, and we began heading out into the water. As we did this, I realized i had forgotten to attach my inflator hose to the drysuit, so we fixed that quickly, while also disentangling my backup regulator, as that had gotten tangled as well. After that, we finally could start descending.
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| The tube feets and spines of a Common sea urchin |
Dive 1:
Depth: 27 m, Time 52 minutes, Temp 18 C
As we descended, my buddy got some problems with their mask filling up with water, so we aborted the descent and fixed around the mask a little bit on the surface, making sure that it didn't go over the hood, after this was fixed, we once again started descending, this time it went much better, but as I trimmed out, I realized that the hose to the backup regulator was sliding over my head, so I spent the dive shoving it behind my head every now and then. As we descended i also spotted a shape a bit off in the distance, with a closer look I saw that it was a somewhat sizeable Lion's mane jellyfish. After snapping a few photos and then ducking out of the way, we continued following the slope until we found the drop-off. At the drop-off we followed the wall descending for a bit before starting to swim to the right. After a while, it was time to turn around, so we ascended to somewhat shallower depth and started swimming back towards the starting point. We surfaced at 52 minutes, got up, doffed our gear and got ready for a nice surface interval in the sun.
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| Nice closeup of a Dahlia anemone |
Dive 2:
Depth: 26 m, Time: 55 min, Temp: 18 C
After a surface interval with snacks and sun, it was once again time to head into the water. This time I had more control on my stuff and thus didn't encounter any problems. As we were to descend, my buddy suddenly lost one of their weight pockets, so I had to go down and look for it. After searching around for a bit, I found it and brought it up to the surface. After re-attaching the weight pocket to my buddy's BCD and making sure it was well attached, we once again swam out into the bay. This time we headed to the left side of the bay, as we never really dive on that side. We descended without a hitch and started following the slope diagonally to the left and downwards. After a little while, we came across a drop-off and cliff walls. The cliff wall itself was quite covered with animals such as anemones and tube dwelling marine worms, almost like the big wall in Ormestad. As we were swimming along the wall, I spotted something small and white, with a closer look, I saw that it was a Candy striped flatworm, a beautiful little critter that looks a bit like a nudibranch. After staying and photographing it for a bit, it was time to turn around the dive. We surfaced at 55 minutes, got up, doffed our gear and started getting ready for heading home.
All in all, in spite of the somewhat chaotic beginning of both dives, it was a super nice dive day, even if the visibility was less than ideal in the deeper waters, lots of particles in the water.
So until next time! Keep on swimming!
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| Candy striped flatworm (Prostheceraeus vittatus) looks like a nudibranch, but is not at all closely related. |
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