Ormestad 23/2 2020. Pea soup with shrimps

Hi and ho!

This week me and my dive buddies went to Ormestad, in the Gullmar fjord, which according to one of us is the best dive site in the Gullmar fjord. The weather forecast had predicted a day of blowing and scattered showers. When we arrived at the site and removed all the equipment, it was time for the first dive.

The Sea pen is not a plant, it is an animal

Dive 1: 
Me and my dive buddy decided to do a wall dive, which meant we had to swim a long way to reach the rock wall that is on the left side of Ormestad. That being said and done, once we got to the place we thought was appropriate, we started going down. The first 5 meters before it cleared up was like "pea soup", once we got under the murky surface layer, the visibility was about 3-5 m. We swam on along the cliff wall down to about 25 m depth. When we got rid of the lamps along the bottom, there were very many small reflective dots, the eyes of shrimp, and large ones as well. After a while we turned and swam back the way we came. The water temperature was measured to 5 ° C at all depths, which was expected as there has been a lot of mixing of the water masses lately. As we stepped out of the water, my dive buddy slipped and hurt themselves in the arm, which caused us to change the diver pair for dive 2.

There was a lot of Caramel shrimp during the dives

Frilled anemones sure can grow big, they are pretty too though

Dive 2:
On the second dive, me and my dive buddy chose to go out on the deep soft bottom, this because we were too lazy to take the long surface swim to the rocks. That said, we went down in peace, the visibility was as bad as the first dive the first 3-5 meters. Once we got down under the lid, oriented ourselves and made "Okay signs" we swam out and down, while we swam we saw that more and more shrimp, until it reached the level of a mat of shrimp. By then I had stopped photographing them as it became far too much for me. When we reached the maximum depth of about 30 m we swam around for a while before it was time to turn. While we were swimming around, we came across a large Deep sea king crab out on the soft bottom, more shrimp and a couple of large sea snails. The temperature in the water during this dive was between 5-6 ° C, which is quite normal for the season.



All in all, this was a very good dive day, even though my first dive buddy got hurt

So until next time, keep on swimming!

Deep sea King Crab

Jordfall 02-02-2020 Camera settings and cold waters

Hej och hå!

This week me and my dive buddies went once again to Jordfalls harbor to dive.

Daubed shanny

As it coincided, the weather was very nice with brilliant sun and a very high temperature for January. When we arrived at the dive site we picked out all the stuff, divided ourselves into dive pairs and got ourselves ready for diving. I recently made some new settings on my camera, so this time I was going to test these "in the field".

The first dive followed me and my dive-mate the cliff wall outwards to keep us at a reasonably reasonable depth. During this dive we observed, among other things, many other Daubed shannies as well as a Grey gurnard

The Grey gurnard uses it's fins to creep along the seafloor

On today's second dive, we used new dive pairs, as some of us had become cold during the first dive and therefore choose to not do another dive. This dive we decided to go a short time and a little deeper as we were all half-cold and did not have a very long surface interval. Me and my dive buddy made a surface swim to the end of the floating dock before we went down. Once down we started going out towards the soft bottom to look for king crabs, unfortunately the king crabs was nowhere to be found during this dive. Instead, we found various other little things, such as a striped sea cook, swimming crabs and hermit crabs.

Eelgrass anemone

When it was then time to turn back and finish the dive, we followed the bottom up until we got into waist-deep water and decided to just get up.

All in all, this was a very nice diving day. 

So until next time, Keep on Swimming!

Common dragonet, the most colourful of all dragonets found in Sweden