Swimming with sea lions in Baird Bay
Swimming with sea-lions
Lee Atkinson gets up close and personal with endangered sea creatures on the Eyre Peninsula of South Australia.
The waters of the Southern Ocean that wash the western side of South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula are so cold they take my breath away. The first five minutes in the water have me hyperventilating. “Enough is enough,” I say to myself. “No-one goes swimming in the Southern Ocean in mid-winter – it’s sheer madness. I’m out of here!”
Frantically, I kick my way back towards the aluminium tinny that bobs on top of the crystal water.
Then, without warning, a large, sleek sea-lion head breaks the surface centimetres from my face, quickly followed by those of two near-identical mates. We make eye contact and suddenly, the water doesn’t seem so cold. For the next 20 minutes, the four us – three 200-kilogram wild animals and me – circle, swim and dive, around, over and behind each other. It’s one of the most incredible experiences of my life.
This is no theme-park splash about with trained animals. These sea-lions are huge, wild creatures in their natural environment, and they can swim much better than I can. Naturally enough, I’m nervous at first, keeping my fingers and toes well out of reach in case they look a little too tasty. But soon, I realise that these guys want to play. The more I splash and duck-dive, the more the sea-lions respond. In fact, they seem to mimic me: when I circle, so do they; when I surface, they come up for a look; when I dive towards the sea-floor, they follow.
The Australian sea-lion is one of the rarest of seal species. The entire population comprises only around 12,000. Nearly two-thirds of the population lives in South Australian waters, and Baird Bay, where we are swimming, is the permanent home of a breeding colony of 70 or so.
Swimming with sea lions in Baird Bay
Alan and Trish Payne have been operating Baird Bay Ocean Eco Experience for the past 17 years. Their half-day tours include swimming with sea-lions and, if the weather permits, swimming with the bay’s resident pod of bottlenose dolphins. But unlike those wildlife-watching tours that spend hours chasing harassed marine creatures, this one is all about conservation. The sea-lions are never fed and all interaction, stress the Paynes, must be initiated by the animals.
“They recognise our boat and seem to be able to dissociate it with fishing boats that lay nets in the water and sometimes hunt them for fun,” says Trish Payne. “We never approach the sea-lions – we anchor in the same place and let them come to us. All the interaction is strictly on their terms.
“We came here to semi-retire,” she explains, during our cruise out into the middle of Baird Bay. “We didn’t know anything about sea-lions except what we’d been told by local fishermen, who advised us to take lots of rocks with us if we were going fishing. The rocks were to throw at the sea-lions to stop them eating our fish. But one day, a sea-lion came to the side of our boat and Alan jumped in with it: it was the beginning of our lifelong love-affair with sea-lions.The Paynes dream of creating a dolphin and sea-lion sanctuary in Baird Bay one day.
Inside the tuna tunnel
Back on board after our swim with the sea-lions, we rush to change from chilly wetsuits into dry, warm clothes, then cradle steaming cups of tea, in near-rapture about our contact with these incredible, wild and beautiful animals.
As we cruise back to shore, the resident dolphins arrive to steal the show, surfacing around the boat with calves in tow, while ospreys, terns and pelicans wheel above us.
Swimming with sea-lions is not the only marine encounter available on the Eyre Peninsula, an area famous for its seafood. Port Lincoln is home to the largest commercial fishing fleet in the southern hemisphere as well as to several tuna farms. Matt Waller, a fourth-generation Port Lincoln fisherman, also runs adventure tours that include the chance to swim with a colony of sea-lions off Hopkins Island, around a 90-minute cruise from Port Lincoln. Here, the sea-lions are just as friendly, and I share a very special encounter with one playful pup who is mesmerised by the underwater camera that floats around my neck. It’s as if he thinks it’s a toy and he approaches, time and time again, so close I’m almost convinced he’s going to try to eat it. The more I spin and dive, the more the pup responds – and when I stop, dizzy and breathless, he leaps right over my head as if to say, “Come on, let’s play some more”.
But Matt Waller has more in store: on the cruise back to Port Lincoln, we stop in at his bluefin tuna farm. Most commercial pens hold a couple of thousand tuna; Waller’s is home to just 50 or so. With each fish weighing in at around 30 kilograms and worth around AU$700, there’s a lot of money swimming around this tiny pen, but these tuna will never be sold, he asserts – though he did have some stolen a year or so ago.
Waller has built an underwater viewing tunnel from which you can watch these amazing fish.
We pull on our masks and snorkels and, after a quick lesson on how to hold the bait-fish so our fingers don’t get nipped by the tunas’ super-sharp teeth, gingerly lower ourselves into the water.
What happens next is insane: I’ve barely time to adjust to the underwater gloom when what feels like hundreds of monster-sized fish are charging at my face at seemingly a million miles an hour. My tiny piece of mackerel is wrenched out of my hand in the first half-second but it seems I’m still the centre of fishy attention – helped along by some pesky kids on the pontoon, possibly throwing bait in my direction.
After a few minutes of this I relax, realising that the tuna, though they turn away only at the last split-second, aren’t going to hit me in the face; nor do they want to eat my ears. But it’s a surreal experience.
The tuna aren’t as playful as sea-lions and, though the encounter with them is more intense, it’s also lots of fun.
Mum was wrong when she told me you should never play with your food.
Photography by Lee Atkinson and tour companies.
Travel Facts
Getting there
Where to stay
What to do
- Baird Bay Ocean Eco Experience Tours (swimming with Australian sea- lions and bottle-nose dolphins at Baird Bay), phone 08 8626 5017 or visit www.bairdbay.com
- Adventure Bay Charters (half-day sea- lion adventure tour and tuna swimming at Port Lincoln), phone 0488 428 862 or visit www.adventurebaycharters.com.au
- Calypso Star Charters (shark cage diving at Port Lincoln), phone 08 8682 3939 or visit www.sharkcagediving.com.au
When to go
- The best time to go swimming with sea- lions is from September through to May.
Further information
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