Hi and ho!
This weekend was full of diving really first on Saturday in Hällebäck, a site we haven't dived in a bit for reasons unknown. and on Sunday, we took some of the newer divers in the club to the Jordfall marina for easy diving. Either way, there was much diving all around.
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| Close up of the Common sea pen. |
Day 1: Hällebäck
Dive 1:
Depth: 30 m, Time 44 min, Temp: 13 C
Well the first dive of the day was a bit of a half-day-half-night dive, me and my buddies swam out a bit from the pier before we started descending. Naturally my ring system is still leaking, as i haven't managed to find time to fix it just yet. We descended in a relatively orderly fashion and started to follow the slope downwards and outwards to the left. As all of us were photographers, our progress was rather slow, because we kept stopping every now and then to photograph something that caught our fancy. After a little bit, i spotted a small shape in the darkness, close to the bottom, turned out to be a squid, so i signalled to my buddies to come and start snapping photos, what ensued was the biggest silt cloud i have ever seen, all three of us huddled in a triangle around the poor squid snapping our photos until the cloud made it impossible to keep snapping. So at this point, we continued the dive, swimming along the slope towards the left. After a little bit, one of my buddies signalled that it was time to turn around and that we did. We ended the dive at 44 minutes, got up and got hot coco for the surface interval.
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| Common bobtail squid hanging around |
Depth: 26 m, Time: 53 min, Temp: 13 C
After a surface interval with hot drinks and some more dive planning, we once again made ready to head into the water, this time however, one of my buddies decided to not do a second dive, as they were feeling a bit cold, which is fair, it is rather cold in the water at this time of the year. Me an my other buddy decided to do a second dive, in spite of the cold, so we headed out into the water once more. This time, we planned to dive towards the right side of the site instead, so we descended almost immediately after swimming out a little bit from the entry point. Now it was real proper dark in the waters and many critters were out and about walking and or swimming. At about 20 m depth, we started encountering squids, and quite many this time, though i only managed to snap photos of a few of them. We followed one of the squids for quite a few minutes as it swam along the bottom before letting it be. After a while, we started turning around and swim back, as we intended to hang around a bit more shallow to see what hung around in the eelgrass, but not much was really hanging out there as far as I could see. We surfaced at 53 minutes, got up from the water and got ready to head home.
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| The polychaete Oxydromus flexuosus, a small but vividly coloured species. |
Day 2: Jordfall
Dive 1:
Depth 24 m, Time 57 min, Temp 13 C
We headed out into the water and started swimming towards the left side of the bay, as we intended to do a dive along the wall of Jordfall. Me and my buddy swam along the wall at about 15 m depth for quite a while really as i couldn't quite find the drop-off down to deeper waters. Either way, about the time we found the drop-off it was starting to become time to turn around and start swimming back, so we ascended a bit and started swimming back towards the starting point. As we swam, I kept peeking into the crevices and cracks on the cliff, seeing many a squat lobster and several leopard spotted gobies, but alas, they were too far in for me to photograph. At the safety stop, we stayed for a bit longer as my buddy wanted to do some valve drills, but as soon as they were done we started ascending to the surface, we surfaced at 57 minutes, and it had already gotten dark at this point. We waded onto land and started making ready for a surface interval with hot chocolate.
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| Broadnosed pipefish hiding among the eelgrass in the shallow waters. |
Dive 2
Depth: 24 m, Time 38 m, Temp: 13 C
After a surface interval, and some discussions about dive profiles, we once again headed out to do a second dive, this dive, we planned to sweep over the soft bottom to look for squids and what not, now it had been proper dark for a little while, so chances for squids were higher, but alas, this time there were no squids to be seen. But almost immediately after descending, I spotted a common dragonet hanging out on the bottom, which I promptly began photographing. After I was done, we continued the dive along the slope in Jordfall, looking for the critters that prefer the darkness of the night instead of light of the day. On this dive, there were much krill swimming around the light, but not much else going on. As we began to turn upwards again, my buddy signalled me to come look at something, turned out to be a rather large lobster hiding underneath a concrete anchoring block. After snapping a few photos, none of which turned out any good, we continued on our way back towards the starting point, following the slope upwards. We surfaced at 38 minutes, got upp and doffed our gear, getting ready do head home.
All in all, it was two days of nice diving for sure!
So until next time! Keep on swimming!
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| Common dragonet male with its iridescent colour patterns. |
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