Sea Lions Getting Bold

[Rob]

Anything that big and aggressive would die if it came within 10 yards of me. Period.

Try being in 65 feet of water and having 10-15 big males all around you circling.  Had several of the 15+ foot long bull stellars come flying at me full speed and stop 2 inches from my face touching my mask with thier whiskers.  The rush of water alone about pushed me over backwards.

Their "wingspan" is a good 8 feet across from flipper to flipper.

Amazing experience.  I held my ground and kept eye contact with them and after 20 min or so they accepted that I was there, not edible, not mating material and not a toy and went about normal bull sea lion business.

[fastdam]

no thank you. 

[jackmaster]

Anything that big and aggressive would die if it came within 10 yards of me. Period.

Try being in 65 feet of water and having 10-15 big males all around you circling.  Had several of the 15+ foot long bull stellars come flying at me full speed and stop 2 inches from my face touching my mask with thier whiskers.  The rush of water alone about pushed me over backwards.

Their "wingspan" is a good 8 feet across from flipper to flipper.

Amazing experience.  I held my ground and kept eye contact with them and after 20 min or so they accepted that I was there, not edible, not mating material and not a toy and went about normal bull sea lion business.

just curious if you had a change of undershorts back at the pick-up, you guys that dive got brass nuggets boy, i would love to dive, but i would figure out a under water fully automatic 10 gauge with a never ending supply of 00 buck, i could be diving in the puget sound and i would be the first known attack of a great white shark in those waters, no thanks, i will keep my feet on the dry ground 

[Rob]

I was impressed enough to write the story down so I would not forget.

here it is (apologies if this is thread jacking - I can delete it if need be)

Steller Rock Sea Lion Dive August 2008

Sometimes you do a dive that you know will standout in your mind for the rest of your life.  I had two of those kinds of dives in August of 2008 at Neah Bay.

There is a rock that pokes up out of 60 feet of water off the NW corner of Washington State between Cape Flattery and Tatoosh Island called Steller Rock.  It gets its name due to the ever present group of Steller Sea Lions that lay around on it.  Usually there are both males and females present, but sometimes its all females, or all males.  Steller Sea Lions are very large, surpassed in size by fellow pinnipeds only by the Walrus and Elephant seal.  Females can be as large as 8 feet long and 600 pounds.  Males can grow to 11 or 12 feet long and can weigh-in between 1200 and 2500 pounds!  When they sit upright they are about 5 feet tall!  Massive animals.

My dive buddy Keith and I were at Stellar Rock on day one of a three day trip to dive Neah Bay Washington.  We passed by Steller Rock and noticed that all the ladies were Missing in Action leaving a bachelor group of about 25 males all alone.  About 15 of them in the water when we went by so I thought I would drop in near the rock and see if they would come visit me underwater.  I did not want to drop right next to the rock for three reasons.  First I did not want to spook them and have them run off (or worse, spook them into charging and jumping into the boat, after all, “where does a 2,000 pound sea lion sit?”).  Second, I did not want them to descend on me too fast while trying to drop to the bottom.  Third there is a 100 yard rule for approaching marine mammals; you can’t go any closer, but they can come see you.

Since I was diving with a scooter, I was able to jump into the water about 150 yards from the rock, and drop down while scootering on a compass heading to the rock.  I was on the bottom in about 30 seconds and had just taken a compass bearing for the rock when 4 of them showed up.  They buzzed me 3 or 4 times staying about 15 feet away.  Viz was about 20 feet.  I gotta tell ya, having a 12 foot long animal zipping in at 20 knots in 20 feet of viz and checking me out while all alone was quite a rush!

They spent about 2 min with me.  When they left I was feeling pretty good; 3 min into the dive and I had already seen 4 sea lions!  Mission accomplished.  Successful dive.  I resumed my heading to the rock to see if I could bump into some more and was ambushed by 6 more sea lions.  All 8 to 12 feet long.  Several over 2,000 pounds!  They were coming in to 5 feet now and whirling all around me.  I decided to try some acrobatics of my own with the scooter, doing loops and tight circles.  Well they loved that and were all over me.  They would fly in at full speed and come to a screeching halt 6 inches (yes inches) from my face and stare at me.  The would come down in packs, and spend 3-4 minutes at a time buzzing me before heading up for more air.  On the surface, Keith said it looked like they were conferencing with each other during the air breaks; very excited, huffing and puffing.  One could almost hear them… 

“What is that?”

“I don’t know.  What is that yellow thing it is holding that moves him around and makes funny noises?”

“No idea.  Think we can we eat him?”

“Don’t think so.  Can we mate with him?”

“Probably not, can we play with him?”

“Yeah!  Let’s go back down!!  Woo Hoo!!”

I would get a 2 minute reprieve between mobbings and they would be back.  At one time I counted ELEVEN sea lions all flying around me anywhere from 2 feet to 15 feet away at the same time.  That’s over 8 tons of animal! 

After about 27 minutes I just could not take it any more.  As cool as it was, I was loaded with adrenaline and pretty nervous.  They had this habit of coming in from out of nowhere and suddenly being next to me.  Not only that, but they make penetrating eye contact.  They peer right into your eyes and stare.  Very interesting, and quite intimidating.  Being in the water with these animals really emphases just how incompetent we humans are in the water.  I have been in the water with large fish, sharks, seals, and all manner of other sea life.  Nothing can move with the combination of speed and agility that sea lions have.  Especially given the sheer size of these dudes!  I understand the females are even more agile and inquisitive.  So after 27 minutes I decided I had pushed the envelope as far as I was comfortable.

I waited for the gang to head up for air and quickly took a 180 degree course reversal and headed away from the rock.  After 2-3 minutes on the trigger at the 30 foot level (in greenwater I might add i.e. no bottom visible, no surface visible) I paused to get my surface buoy ready.  I needed to launch the buoy on a line to the surface so that Keith would know where I was and come over to pick me up before I drifted off to Japan.  The sea lions had let me leave without following so that was nice.  However as I shot the bag to the surface, two huge 2,000+ pound males came flying by to check me out.  They made a slow pass and went on their way.  Back up on the surface I recounted my story over and over in awe of what I had just experienced!

The next day, we were back out near Steller rock again – about ¼ mile away - and I was trying to decide between a wall dive, and another rocky reef in the area when it started to rain.  That seemed to get the sea lions going as they started barking at each other and sitting up.  I looked over and all 25 of them jumped into the water – it’s about a 6 foot drop to the water so they made quite a ruckus and splash when they got moving.  I instantly decided to head over and try for a repeat performance.

I used the same approach as the day prior and had Keith drop me about 150 yards away.  I closed the gap a little on the surface, and dropped down to 60 feet.  Once again they were on me in less than a minute - this time before I even got all the way to the bottom - and were far less inhibited than the day before.  The first pack came at me as fast as they could, and buzzed at a distance of less than one foot.  Again they made intense eye contact the whole time they were with me.  This time, while I was still loaded with adrenaline, I was not nearly as spooked as the first time.  The waves of sea lions came in over and over and in larger groups, I counted 15 in one of the packs!

They can be real clowns.  One of my favorite antics was this one medium sized male who was positioned more or less a sitting position, slowly floating down from the 40 foot level towards the bottom with his front flipper bent back intensely scratching his belly.  I halfway expected his back leg to start thumping like dogs do.

There was another one with a weird looking marbled eyeball who kept coming back to see me.  Rather than a solid black pupil like all the others, his left eye looked like a kaleidoscope – the black pupil and white of the eye was fractured into odd shapes.  He kept trying to get behind me and nibble my fins (one of them did manage to do this to me when I was not looking).  I turned the scooter into a tight loop and we went round and round in tight circles for at least a minute as fast as we could.  While we were doing this, I suddenly felt a wave of fast moving water surge over me, and something hit my head!  A massive full grown bull evidently did not like our game and wanted us to stop; indicating this by whapping me on the head with his body as he did a fly-by!  Both marble eye and I took the hint and stopped playing our little game. 

As I said before, marble eye came down several times to checked me out.  At times he came over and mouthed the scooter I was holding to check it out.  Seeing this, others tried to do the same, touching their face to it, rubbing their whiskers on it, etc.  They really were fascinated with it, probably due to the noise or bright yellow color.  They did not ever bite it though which surprised me.

I understand that when sea lions become aggressive, they will blow bubbles and bark underwater.  Of course I blow bubbles the whole time I’m down so they probably thought I was being aggressive to them.  Needless to say I tried really hard to hold my breath while they were up in my face.  I had two of them come by me and let loose a small stream of bubbles as they passed.  They seemed pretty docile though.  There was another one who came up to me in a funny posture.  We were about 10 feet off the bottom and he approached really slowly.  He was coming directly at me at eye level making eye contact.  What was really strange was that he was hovering towards me in a perfect sitting position.  When he got about 4 feet away, he let loose a really large burst of bubbles.  At this point I broke eye contact with him and turned away hoping he would take that as submissive behavior.  He did, or at least he felt comfortable enough not to escalate the situation.

After about 30 minutes they got bored with buzzing me and came down and started sitting on the bottom in groups to stare at me.  They seemed to like picking up small pieces of seaweed, chewing it up into little pieces and spitting it back out.  When they did this, I was able to see their huge teeth.  Definitely did not want to come in contact with those!  As they sat around the bottom, they started wrestling with each other a bit.  The play time escalated and they began lightly chomping on each others necks.  At this point, I felt it best to leave as I did not really want one coming over and trying to “play bite” my neck!  So after spending a glorious 38 minutes with them, I waited for the gang to head back to the surface and bolted off with the scooter again.  Once far enough away, I shot my buoy to the surface and got picked up by Keith. 

What an experience!!  Such large animals, and they came right up to me to interact.  It was truly something I will never forget!

[Rob]

some photos of the dive site from a different trip.  females in the water, males on the rock.


Most of the Puget Sound Sea Lions are the smaller California Sea Lions, not the Stellar Sea Lions you get on the coast

[jackmaster]

caught alot of bottom fish out there, ROB your crazy man, absolutely insane

[bracer40]

Man if that were me underwater I imagine I'd have a whole lotta cleaning up to do when I got to shore!
Amazing story.

[Rob]

Here is how I look at it.

We all know people who we work with that spend little to no time in the woods.  A large percentage of them are afraid of bears and cougars.  For those of us that spend time in the woods, and have encountered bears and cougars, we have come to understand that there is really very little to be afraid of.  Respect, yes.  Fear?  Not really.  Sure you have a rouge bear every now and then, but by in large, there is not much to be afraid of once you get some exposure to them.

Same is true with the sea lions and sharks and other critters in the sea.  The more time you spend with them, the less fear you have.  Always treat them with respect, but no need to fear them.

[fastdam]

Your a brave man Rob.  Land animals im on somewhat equal footing with (except for my bullets) but in the ocean i feel like a worm floating on a trout lake.

[MuleDeerCrazy]

Had a buddy spear-fishing in the San Juans one time and said all the sudden everything went dead quiet, all the fish were gone and he started getting an eerie feeling.  Turns around towards the deep water behind him and all he sees is an eye at first in the deeper, darker water, then the rest of the Orca came into view.  He said it stared at him for a little bit and then moved off.

Though it was in no way aggressive towards him, he said it scared him so bad that he could never go back in the water and gave up diving.

[sakoshooter]

About 5 yrs ago +/-, a buddy and I hunted the skinny ground between the Nisqually Rr and the ol Braggett Farm. I was a member of the duck club at that time. Very high tide. We had my portable blind pounded in the ground in a 'C' with the open portion facing the flooded brush on the river bank. With the tide peaking, we were standing in about 16" - 18" of water. That morning the chum salmon were running hard and many accidently swam into our blind getting my yellow lab all excited. We'd grab em and throw em back into the river. The sea lions were thick and I'd just told my buddy not to shoot anything that would fall in the river - strong current and too many sea lions - when another chum swam into the blind followed by a big bull sea lion. He came out of the water between us and in the blind only inches away and made a big grunt. Scared the hell out of us for a second or two. Dog growled and got very protective and the bull slid back into the water. A very long 3 seconds. Let me tell ya, when you're dozing off in the blind, that is a good eye opener, LOL.

[Rob]

Now that is a fantastic story!  Outstanding!

[BiggLuke]

Dang...   screw that.
I only want to hunt lakes from now on...  lol....   

    cool encounters guys.

[jackmaster]

sorry mark, but if i was with you i would have acted in self defense  actually i would have been crying like a sissy, suckn my thumb in the corner yelln for my mama 

[johnsc6]

Can't trace T shot!   If one came as close to me as the OP indicated, there would at least be a hole or two in the water near it.   And, don't even get me started on what I would do if one came after my dog.... 

don't be scared.