(12-01-10) Fifth article of our tour in the Ria de Arousa with Jacobo Alonso. The scenario of the last dive with zero degrees of temperature is a huge submarine granite rock in the middle of the estuary, where the photographer looks for a pair of cuttlefish mating.

    Hello. I hope that Christmas and New Year have made all your wishes come true, or, at least, most of them. I want to thank the emails I’ve received after my last article, because your help and advices allow me to improve and adapt to your likes and dislikes.

    In these emails a dominant element was the expression of gratitude for my work and praises to my level of diving, and I would like to make a small clarification. I'm not superman, water here is not so different from the one in rest of Spain. I’ve dived in the Mediterranean with 5 m of visibility and 13ºC, and I was not the only one there, people from there also thrown into the water, but not all...

    The thing is that everything I do you can do it, and I am sure that many of you have done it. The only thing In favour of me is that the sea is in front of my home; but seriously, if I can you can. Regarding your gratitude… it is mutual.

    For reasons of weather, I have had to cancel the foresight to go to dive in La Herradura, where I was going to meet my friend Esteban Toré, Spanish champion in Fotosub 09. This week, with Spain frost and dejected by storms of rain, winds and cold… even in Seville it has snowed! Here we couldn’t be less, and it has also snowed.

    For the dive on Saturday (January 9th) we don’t have the pleasant company of our friends from Compostela, Aldrey, who I have already introduced, Félix, Damián, Ernesto and Bruno, who have had to stay at home, or better said, have had to turn back, since the exit from Santiago was impossible. Aldrey even had to be rescued by a crane when his car stopped at a red light, slipped on the ice and ended up in the gutter. For once in life I would have preferred to be second in line at the traffic lights...

    Only Jose, Carlos and I got to get the yacht club of Ribeira. And the truth is that, all of us without exception were waiting to get into the water. Not only for diving, but also because staying in underwear in the open at 0°C, with the trunk open although for just two minutes to get dressed with the heat the suit ... seriously, it is not nice at all.

DIVING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE RÍA DE AROSA

    Hydronauta had planned for us for today the “Bajo de A Tritonia", a huge submarine granite rock located almost in the middle of the estuary. It starts in a small area of caves and fissures of various sizes 18m deep, ideal for spending the last few minutes of the dive, and goes down to the sand for 30m to any other direction. Therefore, we decided that the optimal mix for this dive is the EAN 34, which is totally safe to the 32.5 m and would allow us some extra time than the EAN 32.

    Today we have to be team-mates Carlos and me, and the other pair is Jacinto and Jose. Here we expect to find, besides the normal fauna of this kind of places, gorgonians, but with a slight catch. We are in the breeding season of cuttlefish, and they usually lay their eggs in gorgonians. My hope now is to get a photo of cuttlefish mating.

    Today the water is cold, 12 º C and I am not intended to spend the whole dive looking for taking a picture, but I do not loose hope, and as we are at 25m deep, I take this photo to Carlos.

    I follow Carlos while I stare each gorgonian I find, because if I see some eggs, it means that there are cuttlefishes in the area. Today gorgonians hide more their secrets than the eggs we are looking for. And, although there is not much place for me to take a picture, I can show you to a little animal that lives on feeding on them, it is the neosimnia spelta.

    I’ve be looking for a common name of this animal on the internet, but I have found nothing. What I can say is that this animal is gastropod, its maximum size is about 1.5 cm and that if you want to see it, it will almost always be in the area near the trunk of the gorgonian. To get close, do it extremely carefully. The mottled red area you see in the picture is the mantle, and if you move the gorgonian sharply it will get close, and you will only see its white shell, which is also beautiful, but it loses interest.

MARINE CARROT HALF-BURIED IN SAND

    We have been here for a while and we still have not found anything I want, but I make the sign for Carlos to go towards the sand and see if we are lucky. When we reach the sand my alarm clock starts ringing telling me that we are 30m deep, we have little time, but I still don’t remember having shown you the veretillum cynomorium.

    They are cnidarian, it is, sea nettle, covered by a great colony of retractile polyps, and each of them is a different animal. They feed filtering water when they are stretch. Like now.

    Although we can also find them shrunk, and the “carrot”, half-buried in sand. As you all know, this kind of dives, the ones moderately deep, have the disadvantage of bottom time, which is very short. On the one hand they are good, you see other animals ... but they become shorter, and you have to climb soon.

    We started the ascent to the top of the rock with the intention of extending a little the dive. In this area where we go, between 20 and 18 m., we can see a lot of nudibranchs, gobies and blennies among the small algae that cover the rock. The first are more frequent in spring and summer, but in winter, from time to time, they can also be seen.

    I like blennies because there is great variety and because they are not afraid and let you get close enough to them and they give you several opportunities to photograph them before moving, and that is important, or at least to me.

    Besides blennies and gobies, in this more superficial area there are plenty of sea urchins. Usually, I completely ignore them, they are always the same: blue, red or green, but today, I look a white one, and really, I do not know if I do not remember them or I have never seen them. What I know is that I loved it. Something different is always interesting, isn’t it?

WE COULDN'T TAKE THE PICTURE WITH CUTTLEFISH

    Although this is the last picture of this dive, it is not the last of the day, as our friend Cheché has prepared a surprise for us when we arrive to the port. Once on board, we talk about how the dive has been. Carlos and I have not gotten the picture of the cuttlefish, and neither Jacinto nor Jose have found the yellow nudibranch they were looking for, but it is not bad.

    We have enjoyed a lot and it has been good to use EAN 34, since we have had 58 minutes in total, although the truth is that is has been short comparing it with the trip we have to do now, but the sea us calm, there is little cold wind, and now t it blows towards to our faces, plus the speed of the ship… I cannot tell. We couldn’t wait for arriving.

    When we reached the port, while docking, our friend Cheché showed us something we didn’t expect. Cheché is a professional diver in charge of the maintenance of the salmon farm that there is near Rúa Island.

    This farm is simple. There is an enormous bag- net closed in the bottom where salmons feed and grow. It is fully supervised 24 hours a day from the surface, and Cheché supervises the submarine area. As it usually happens, many animals come to eat the leftovers of the salmons, and others, as dolphins, go directly to them. But they are not dolphins the only ones which like salmons; they are also the favourite dish of lamprey.

THE LAST PHOTO: A LAMPREY IN SEARCH OF FARM SALMONS

    Lampreys live in the sea but breed in rivers. They are vampires of the sea: they suck blood from their preys until they are killed, and protect the company product is the work of our friend. So, he dives here two times a day to check that dolphins have not broken the nets or that parasites like these do not destroy his livelihood.

    When he show them to us… Wow! The truth is that I get stunned. Who would have said to me that I was going to jump into the water for the second time this morning, fortunately my 12x300 bar still has 80 bar inside. Well, we jump into the water and the picture of this lamprey is the best one I could take.

    I didn’t have many opportunities. This animal is extremely fast and does not give a second chance. Knowing this, we decided to anticipate. We found it among waters, in an area with sandy bottom clean of algae where it couldn’t hide, so we could have a book and this picture is what I like the most.

    With this picture we have finished today. As always, I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed doing it. And you know that you can contact the magazine or me if you are interested in a particular dive. jacoboalonso@horminor.com Also, I would like to ask you a favour, I would like to know your opinion about the articles… so getting your 10 mark is my aim. Thank you.