Moss 28/6-30/6 2024, Dive trip across the border

Hi and ho!

This time around, I went on a longer dive trip over the weekend with my dive club, the destination was to be the area around Moss in Norway, a short distance from the Swedish border, 3 whole days of diving (was the plan).

European lobster doing european lobster things

Dive 1: Heyerdalsbukta (i think) 28/6 2024

Depth: 16.2 m, Time: 55 min, Temp: 13 C

The first dive of the trip, on the same day we arrived to the camping spot and had unloaded our things into the cabins. The divesite was close to our accommodation, and of hard bottom type, there was also a wreck of a margarine carrying boat somewhere close to shore. Either way, a team first went down into the water to check the visibility and current, they reported little current but bad visibility, so the rest of us decided to do this as well. The walking in was a bit hard due to waves and slippery rocks, but we managed to do it somehow. As me and my buddy descended, we found out that the visibility was indeed very bad, but also that further down, there was quite severe current to be had, but we kept trudging on, the current and visibility cleared up at about 9 m depth, after which, the dive was quite enjoyable. We followed the cliffs that went down in plateaus to about 15 m, where my buddy made a few signs i didn't quite understand, and that i mistook for something else, so i turned around the dive as we were also starting to near the 30 minutes mark. We swam back, not having found the wreck (due to another mistake on my side, i didn't quite get the compass heading right. Either way, we ended the dive at 55 minutes without too much hassle, though as the time was rather late, we also decided to not do a second dive on this day.

Bit unexpected to find Deep sea king crab this late in the season here

Dive 2: Kjøvangen brygge 29/6 2024 

Depth: 32 m, Time: 53 min, Temp: 9 C

On the second day, the original plan was to do boat dives, but as the weather had worsened, with strong winds from the south (a leading reason for the bad visibility), so we got one of the locals to recommend us a site for shore diving instead, turned out to be the site i went to last time i was in the neighbourhood, Kjøvangen brygge, a good spot indeed.

Me and my buddy was first in the water this time, we had the instruction to go down quickly and try to find the line leading down towards deeper parts. And we did just that, we found the line pretty quickly and started following it downwards. At about 12 m depth, we encountered the thermocline and the waters cleared up (that was a common thing along all the dives, the thermohalocline was the border between bad visibility and decent visibility). We soon got to the cliff walls present on this site and continued following them down to about 30 m. after which we made our way a bit more shallow. The highlight of this dive was for me us encountering a Deep sea king crab out of season, as they usually are not seen this time of the year in Gullmarn, but I guess Norway is different, even so close to the Swedish border as we were. Either way, after spending some time to photograph the crab, I signalled for us to turn around and head back. As we swam back, we did see quite a few lobsters out in the open. We ended the dive at 53 minutes, got up and onto the pier where we doffed our gear.

Norwegian Red Sea cucumber (Parastichopus tremulus) 

Dive 3: Hvitsten torg 29/6 2024

Depth: 22 m, Time: 45 min, Temp: 11 C

We headed to another site for the second dive of the day, another site i have dived before, this one was a few years ago though, during the "pre-covid" times. This time, i was a bit unsure of diving here, as the wind was blowing straight into the bay, giving rise to quite big swell, but nonetheless, we did our dive. And good was that! We swam out and started to descend, this time we were a group of 3, so it was a bit harder perhaps to keep up the contact between the divers, but we managed. At about 14 m depth, the waters cleared out and the visibility became much better. We followed the cliffs and slopes towards the right, we did end up a bit deeper than planned for this dive perhaps, as our max depth should have been 20m, but as seen, we got down to 22 m, so not too much of breaking the depth limit on this one. After a while we turned back, and as we swam over a rock jutting out, one of my buddies signalled for me to look at something, this something turned out to be a Striped Mullet, a fish we usually see late in the autumn on our sites, but there it was. So i did stay a bit and snapped a few photos before continuing. There was also a lot of lobsters on this site, didn't count, but at least 4 were seen as we swam along. We ended the dive at 45 minutes, got up in the swell and swam in towards land, got up and made ready to head back to our cabins.

Striped mullet, a fish you usually see late autumn in Lysekil

Dive 4: Fristranda 30/6 2024

Depth: 23 m,  Time: 51 min, Temp: 13 C

On the third day, we asked the local dive centre about some good shore diving places close by, preferably more southwards, so that we didn't have to drive for so long to get home afterwards. Said and done, we ended up on a spot called Fristranda with a nice sandy beach and a somewhat protected bay. We made our dive buddy pairs and headed out, I ended up with a newer diver, so i took it a bit more slowly and tried to keep more of an eye on them than i usual (tried being the operative wording here). Well either way, we swam out to a buoy before descending, as to have some sort of reference to make it easier for us, after getting visual contact with the bottom and finding our bearings, we began swimming to the right as we had been tipped off on regarding this site. After swimming a bit along a slope, we found a wall at about 14-15 m, which we then started following for the rest of the dive. Nothing of note was really happening on this dive, it was quite a simple and relaxing dive. After turning around and reaching the end point where we had our safety stop, I deployed my DSMB, waited out the safety stop, and then started to ascending. At the surface, my buddy had a bit of a issue as they had breathed down to about 10 bars, and thus weren't able to completely inflate their BCD, but that was easily fixed with a few breaths of oral inflation. But i guess that if i am to dive with newer people, i will have to tell them to show me when they have 50 bars left, because my buddy sure didn't show that. 

Edible sea urchin with a old tubeworm tube on top of it

Dive 5: Fristranda 30/6 2024

Depth: 26 m, Time: 51 min, Temp: 13 C

The last dive of the trip we made new pairs, as some people didn't want to do a 5th dive. So i ended up with the same buddy as i did on dive 2, and we decided to dive towards the left, to see what could be found there, said and done, we swam out to another buoy a bit further away before descending. We followed the slope downwards and to the left, and before long, we found rocks starting to jut out of the bottom, providing a nice hard substratum for things to settle on. We followed the rocky wall, looking and beholding the things, there is really not much of note happening to us either, and it was quite a nice and relaxing dive as well. We did get a bit lost, as the rocky walls did a turn towards the north in a way we didn't quite expect as we went, so we ended up surfacing a bit further out than we planned and had to do a bit of a surface swim back. We got up and doffed our gear, making ready to head home after a weekend of diving :)

All in all, it was a nice diving weekend, even if the visibility could have been better and not everything went to plan. Some new lessons were also learned :)

So until next time! Keep on swimming!

Horseman anemone (Urticina eques)