Hällebäck 5/3 2022

 Hi and ho!

This weekend, we once again decided to go to Hällebäck, as it is a good spot for both hard cliffs and soft bottoms, though, slightly better for deeper hard cliff bottoms. Also, parking is free there, so that's another factor.

Face photo of a Redback seaslug

Dive 1:

Depth: 27 m, Time: 45 min, Temp: 5 C

We began with swimming out quite far, a little bit too far for my tastes, so we had to swim back a little bit before descending. We descended in a sort of chaotic fashion, as we sort of lost contact with each other during it (I might have descended a bit too fast too). When we got down to the bottom, I also lost one of my fins, which i promptly grabbed and put on again. After sorting everything out, we began following the bottom, soon finding the cliffs and plateau's of the dive site. We followed the wall towards the left, with me and my photographer buddy looking for the small critters that like to hide. 

As we swam along, we spotted nudibranches of different kinds, mostly Redback seaslugs, but also a few Frond eolis. After a little bit, our other buddy signalled for us to come and look at something, this something turned out to be a Rugose squat lobster hanging out on the cliff wall there. At about 20 minutes, we turned back as our photographer buddy had hit their turning pressure, and it was also starting to get a bit cold. We swam back in a orderly fashion, though as we started to near the more shallow parts, it became evident that today there was relatively much currents, so we had to fight that as well.

We surfaced at 45 minutes and got up to have a nice surface interval.

Frond Eolis (Dendronotus frondosus)

Dive 2:

Depth: 29 m, Time: 38 min, Temp 5 C

After a surface interval, we once again went out into the waters. This time, we didn't swim quite as far before descending. This time, we descended in a more orderly fashion, keeping together the group somewhat better. We followed the slope downwards and outwards. On this dive, there wasn't really much of note, other than three Norway king crabs that is, which has been somewhat consistent with diving in Hällebäck right now. 

We surfaced at 38 minutes, as we had gotten a bit cold on the previous dive, and warming up this time of the year is a bit harder.

All in all, it was a nice day of diving

So until next time! Keep on swimming!

Norway king crab, quite common this time of the year in Hällebäck