Diving with the Sea Lions

I radio call and a gracious invitation to dinner aboard Merlin sent me paddling across the choppy bay. While being served a great meal , we discussed dive plans. With the north winds subsiding we all felt that the next day would be the day to go to Los Islotes and play with the sea lions. Merlin has the best tender I have seen on a pleasure boat, an eighteen foot RIB with a 135hp Volvo diesel and a duo prop out drive made the lumpy trip a joy ride.

Los Islotes is a small set of two islands that jet out of the sea forming steep cliffs and a natural sanctuary from the northerly swells. The National Park service has placed well secured buoys in the dive site. As soon as we arrived the water was frothing with playful sea lions beckoning us to join them for some fun. The grunts and barks echo off the cliffs.

A word about the California Sea Lion; normally they are very shy animals who I would not eagerly swim with, just too big. The mothers can be very protective of their pups as with any wild animal so playing with the babies would usually warranty some caution. Looking from their side, man is not a friend to any wild animal and should be treated with great fear. Los Islotes seems to be a place of detent. The Pups eagerly await the frequent divers and the divers come from miles around to play with them. Not

to be over indulgent the Mothers keep a close eye out on the horse play and I assume any perceived harm to a pup would be met with a stern reprisal.

We are so excited to get in the water, gear donned and in we roll into the 78 degree water. As soon as we drop down a few feet we are surrounded by pups nipping and tugging and ready to play. The boat is in forty feet of water and we settle near the bottom where the rocks turn into white sand. The pups do graceful fly by’s and seem to enjoy being petted on their bellies. The gently nip at our closed hands—I keep them closed as the nipping can hurt. They loved to tug on my fins and at one time Walter and I were sitting on the bottom and each had two pups tugging on our two fins, a real hoot! I used more air laughing than breathing on this dive.

We swam around the reef where the sea lions seemed to diminish and the colorful reef fish increase. I saw a huge parrot fish and many forms of reef fish. I need to get a local “ID the fish” book. I went back to the boat, switched tanks and went back to the outer reef to see more of the fish.

Back on the boat we all agreed that this had been a banner dive as we bid Los Islotes adios.