Släggö 6/11 2021, Diversnight

 Hi and ho!

This weekend was the weekend of Diversnight, the international night dive event where divers gather and dive together, making the sea light up like the starry skies. Well, the starry skies were very much absent this year, as the surface weather was absolutely atrocious, with winds and pouring rain, right into the dive site, not that it mattered underwater, but just saying.

Grey gurnard crawling along the bottom

Dive 1:

Depth: 26 m, Time 54 min, Temp: 13 C

Me and my two buddies swam out to about the buoy that marks one spot in Släggö, when we reached the buoy, we started descending into the water column, unfortunately, i didn't manage to fix the leak in my glove system, so yeah, there was some slight leakage into the glove, but nothing immediately alarming. Either way, right as we descended and were getting our bearings in the water, i spot a small long shape in the algae and eelgrass, with a closer look it was a Great pipefish trying to camouflage itself. So of course i had to stay a bit to photograph it. After I deemed that I had bothered the pipefish enough, we continued along the slope as we usually do, making a sweep over the soft bottom before heading towards the cliff side. On the soft bottom were the usual suspects of harbour swimming crabs, as well as some grey gurnards crawling across the seafloor. After a little while we turned towards the cliff, so as to have a reference on the way back. As we swam along the wall, we saw that the lobsters and squat lobsters were quite active at the time, as it was dark after all, some even out in the open. We surfaced at 54 min, got up and prepared for a windy and rainy surface interval, though we soon went up to the dive centre to get away from the worst of it.

Common bobtail, one of many encountered this time

Dive 2

Depth: 23 m, Time: 43 min, Temp 13 C

Now this dive was the big Diversnight dive, so me and my buddy jumped into the water, but waited until they rang the clock before descending into the water column. This time we swam towards the right side of the bay, as we had been told that there were squid to be seen over there. After a little bit, my buddy signalled me to come and look at something, turned out to be the first squid of 5, this particular one was standing quite raised up from the bottom, so i stayed for a few minutes to photograph it as it was posing so nicely for me, a real little camera fiend i tell you! We continued after i was done with that squid, following the slope. As we were swimming, i spotted a fishy shape a little bit away, which i promptly swam closer to and saw that it was a Striped mullet, a fish that changes colour depending on time of the day. After photographing it for a little bit, we continued forward, finding many a squid and mullet before we turned around and started making our way back towards the starting point. We surfaced at 43 minutes, got up and doffed our gear before heading towards the dive centre for some grilled hotdogs and relaxing before we were to head home.

All in all, despite the atrocious weather on the surface, it was a nice and successful divers night event :)

So until next time! Keep on swimming!

Striped mullet on shell gravel