Sea Lion | Murray Foote

Kangaroo Island, South Australia, 8 July 2024.

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Following our visit to Raptor Domain, we visited nearby Seal Bay and undertook the guided tour that comes as part of the Kangaroo Island Tour Pass. There are walkways you can walk along and overlook the beach for free but the guided tour is the only way you can get down to the beach.

The ranger carefully ushered us past a young sea lion sleeping on the path.

On our way to the beach there were quite a few sea lions sleeping in the dunes.

A male and a female.

“Females are either silver or fawn with a cream underbelly and males are dark brown with a yellow mane and are bigger than the females.”

You can see the long front flippers.

Unlike seals, which use their rear flippers to swim, sea lions use their front flippers for propulsion and are the fastest of pinnipeds (seals and sea lions). They can reach up to 30 knots underwater (55 kph).

Male surrounded by females.

Sea-side discussion..

Pinnipeds of course, as with all marine mammals, were once land dwellers who went back into the sea. This happened about 40 million years ago and they took a recognisable form about 17 million years ago.

The closest relatives of sea lions and seals are musteloids such as red pandas, skunks, badgers, weasels, and raccoons.

Here we can see that sea lions are able to “walk on all fours”.

They can move very fast on land too, and I witnessed a stampede at Barren Island in the Falklands in 2011. (I also spent several days at Seal Lion Island in the Falklands in 2018 and ironically, though I saw many elephant seals there, I didn’t see any sea lions).

When I was here in 1987, there were no restrictions, no rangers, no fences. You could potentially walk up close to them which I didn’t do. These days with lots of tourists, restrictions are necessary in the interests of both humans and sea lions. You can see lots of videos online of stupid people walking right up to dangerous animals in the US, often for selfies. These fellows could tear you apart if they wanted to, and you couldn’t run away.

The sand is evidently quite comfortable.

(On the other hand, I saw Harbour Seals in Spitzbergen in 2015 looking very comfortable on angular rocks).

Anthropomorphic comments not provided.

Just coming out of the sea.

There’s a big male on the right, not as big though as some of the South American Sea Lions I saw on Barren island in the Falklands in 2011. They had collars around their neck as large as the mane of a lion, which is presumably how they got their name. The males can weigh 40% more than the Australian sea lions.

Sea Lions, Falkland Islands.

For example, here is an image of female and male sea lions in the Falklands by Montana Short. Montana showed me round Pebble Island when I went there in 2015..