Though sea lions are usually not distinctive to The Galapagos, they’re actually prolific right here.
Almost each seaside you come to is crowded with them and at Puerto Villamil they even occupied the solar loungers!
However my most attention-grabbing sighting was underwater. I used to be snorkelling in James Bay, on Isabela Island, once we got here throughout a bunch of 5 sea lions in a big crevice within the reef. Trying down, it seemed like a roofless cave that resulted in some extent. The 2 youngest sea lions waited within the overhangs whereas the three others corralled their prey, lunging at them and herding them with their fins. Apparently in addition they intentionally blew partitions of bubbles to trigger confusion.
They drove the fish to the purpose of the triangular crevice after which caught them as soon as they have been trapped towards the partitions. The fish have been small, just a few inches lengthy, and should have constituted a small snack for the ocean lions, the equal to a bag of crisps for us. The hunt brought on a lot confusion within the water that it took us some time earlier than we seen that throughout us was an unexpectedly excessive variety of onlooking predator fish, together with pacific creole, flag cabrilla and younger barracudas.
It turned out that these species have been all benefiting from the ocean lion hunt and the focus of small fish being crowded into the cave. At occasions the ocean lions would come up for air simply inches away from us, earlier than rapidly diving again down and
generally they even ran into one in every of us.
More often than not, nevertheless, their actions have been exact. One sea lion really jumped over one in every of my company and when one other headed in the direction of me, I opened my legs and it swam between them. We watched spellbound for what appeared like ages after which the ocean lions sped off in the direction of the open sea. I attempted holding tempo with them,
snorkelling as quick as I might. However they’ll attain a substantial pace
effortlessly.
Quickly they misplaced me and I watched, annoyed, as they disappeared into the deep blue. It’s humorous to suppose that on land our roles are reversed and they develop into the clumsy ones.
I seen them instantly veer over to the seaside the place my spouse and daughters have been taking part in within the surf and once I caught up with them once more I used to be amazed to see all of them swimming round Ruby who was in a yellow inflatable ring. It appears they have been simply curious in regards to the ring and had stopped their hunt to go and examine.
It wasn’t lengthy earlier than they started corralling shoals of small fish again in the direction of their underwater entice once more and this time I saved tempo as they herded their catch a distance of about 150 yards again. It was simpler following them this time as they have been so focussed on the fish and I watched as we rounded a rocky nook and the cave got here into sight. One sea lion swam forward to direct the shoal into their entice.
It was fascinating to observe and I was grateful of the chance to witness this looking method another time.
