A cold dive

Oslo and all of Norway for that matter got a dream like Christmas. Snow was falling, and so did the temperature. It soon became apparent that we were about to enter a cold couple of week. We have had temperature as low as -20 degrees in the city.

Anyhow, being used to somewhat less than optimal diving conditions, I would not let that stop me from diving. 6th of January was the first day of the year that I would be able to go diving. Early that morning I decided that I would not like to stand outside on the diving boat preparing the gear. So I carried my double 12l flask up in to the apartment and assembled my gear in the comfort of my home.

At the dive store the clerk though I was crazy for going diving on a day such as this one. He was looking forward to his upcoming Egypt trip, and not at all inclined to dive in the cold weather.

Arriving at the diving boat, Sjøtrollet, I was surprised to see that we would be five divers this cold evening. There was a 5-10m high sheet of mist/fog above the fjord. Caused by the cold air -17 degrees meeting the warmer water 1.2 degrees. This made our visibility very low, which in turn limited the dive sites we could choose from. The GPS would take us safely to the site, but we would also need to thing about staying out of the cruise ships traveling path as they would not be able to see us in the fog, even if their bridge was fare above the fog.

We dropped anchor at Gylteholmen. Letting the anchor fall deeper than usually. This to avoid searching for the anchor line in the cold upper layer for the water. All diver got dressed, and entered the water at about the same time. No one had turned on their gas, as this would surely have caused the regulators to frees. I my self could not even attache the hose to my dry suit as it was clogged up by ice. After a couple of minutes hanging from the ladder, the gear was thawed. My buddy was able to attach the hose to my suit and carefully we opened the valves. Nothing froze.

Hanging at the top of the anchor line I could see the three divers that had descended before me clearly as they reached 11m. The visibility was awesome, which of course is the reason we dive this time of the year. The water was freezing cold down to about 10.5m, where it grew pleasantly warm. We had a long and warm (8 degrees) dive. After about 50 minutes we started the ascent. Untill this time I had been warm an comfortable, and was ready to stay down for a while longer. When we crossed the 10.5m mark it suddenly grew cold. I began to freeze all over and we ascended quickly. At the time I entered the boat my feet and fingers was terrible cold from the last couple of minutes ascent and climbing up the ladder. Our dry suit quickly began to freeze when exposed to the cold air. As you can see from the image the water on my suit has frozen, and this is only a couple of minute after leaving the water. My buddy just left the water so his suit has not yet frozen.