Diving at Santa Barbara Island - new skill needed

[miket]

(Caption: Diver 1 to Diver 2) - How do we get back to the boat? We never learned the Sea Lion Crawl?



From Sunday April 7 at Santa Barbara Island. We had over 30 animals from this group circling us underwater with another 10 or so at the surface, always directly overhead. This went on for the last 20 minutes of our dive.

A gallery of video frame grabs are here.

- MikeT

 

[PhotoTJ]

This would be the most amazing dive!

 

[kelpmermaid]

I can see it now --- a new Olympic event (in the event of another LA Olympics) or a new PADI certification --- synchronized swimming with sea lions. LOL! I have done Easter Egg hunts there in the past, and they have made off with the eggs.

 

[scubacalifornia]

That's an awesome shot. I'm going to SBI on the Pacific Star next Saturday. Looks like the natives are friendly.
Kevin

 

[Jim Ernst]

We had the exact same situation the last time I was there.

It was soooo much fun and I got a bunch of decent pictures of them , at least the ones that wern't chewing on my strobe!! LOL, It was a blast.

Cool picture you got there as well!!

 

[jlyle]

I'm glad the "landlord" didn't make an appearance while you were there. Diving the rookery has always been a little spooky to me, especially in low vis. I find myself listening for the music (da dum...da dum...). What really gets my attention is when the sealions disappear...what do they know that I don't?

 

[orangelion03]

Fantastic!

Looks a bit crowded though...LOL!!!

 

[Cacia]

Great....I'd love that

 

[drbill]

Yep, thank your lucky stars so many sea lions were in the water... probably means the landlord had already eaten in the last few weeks.

I've seen stuff like that at Los Islotes off La Paz. The little devils rip snorkels from your mask, tear pieces of your wetsuit (and our Zodiac) off, bite camera housings, etc. Keep in mind that sea lions have a number of diseases that can be transmitted to man (I'm not sure about women... they may have some immunity).

 

[headhunter]

That's exactly what it looked like for us on last month's Mo2vation dive to SBI on the Pac Star! It was sooooo much fun!

Christian