Scuba Diving with Sea Lions - Puerto Madryn, Argentina

What an amazing experience. We were joined at the sea floor by about 8 or 9 "teenage" sea lions. These animals were very curious. They saw our boat enter into the cove area near their colony and immediately swam over to check us out. As a few of the sea lions pooped their heads out of the water watching our every move me plunged into the water to join them for about 45 minutes. We lowered ourselves to the sea floor (about 25 feet down) where we were soon joined by this group of quite playful sea lions. They would brush against us and flip around and check us out from all angles. Once in a while one would further investigate us by taking our hand into their mouth and feeling with their teeth.This was not a bite or a nibble. No pressure was exerted. These young sea lions were gentle, graceful, and moved with carefree expression. We were there to play with them and they appeared to love having visitors. The bubbles from our masks seemed to intrigue them as they swam over and around us.

This area of Argentina is a national park with strict enforcement of the interaction with marine wildlife. Only licensed dive operators with a limited number of divers at a time are allowed to enter the water at a time. As well, only two boats can be present at any one time in the cove near the Sea Lion colony. Every diver has to be registered (through the dive operator) with the park service before being allowed on the dive excursion.

Only four places on earth offer this type of adventure. We were allowed to go on this dive as tourists as part of an on-going five year study to assess the impact of human interaction on the Sea Lions and their colony. Feeding the animals was prohibited. Our interaction was limited to their approach to us. The thought so far is that there has been no negative impact on the colony as their birthrate has not changes since the beginning of the study. More results will be released in the next couple of years.

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• Scuba diving
• sea lions
• Puerto Madryn
• Argentina

[MrGtar94]

this happened to me just today man.

its soooo amazing ey, they are like the puppies of the ocean