The Puppies of The Sea

Photo by Linda Elliott

Day 2 of diving Sea of Cortez brought us to the islands of Las Animas and Espiritu Santo where there were sightings of hammerhead sharks and playful sea lions!

At Las Animas, during our morning dives we spotted about 20 hammerhead sharks swimming quite deep at over 100 feet so I got to see them from a distance. I tried to take a video but alas, the footage was quite grainy. But yes, I saw them and they were amazing!

In the afternoon, we spent our next two dives at Espirito Santo Island which is a UNESCO World Natural Heritage Site since 2005 and a National Park since 2007. We first went to Los Islotes, located at the northern tip of the island where there were two sea lion nurseries that were deemed a no dive zone. Nevertheless we encountered very playful sea lion juveniles.

I learned that there are two kinds of sea lions in this area: the Guadalupe fur seals (Arctocephalus townsendi) and California sea lions (Zalophus californianus). The two can be distinguished by their facial features.

Here's a fur seal who has larger eyes than the sea lion. It's ears are more pronounced and tend to stick out more than the ears of the sea lion. Fur seals tend to be darker in color compared to California sea lions. Most of the sea lions that I photographed were fur seals.

One of them tried to bite my fin

and another was very curious about my camera gear!

Photo by Linda Elliott Photo by Linda Elliott

Although there were playful pups, the bigger male sea lion kept watch and I was a bit scared when he swam really close to me. I managed to get a picture of him and I guess he just wanted to make sure that I was a nice person 😂.

The dives were on the shallow side about 20 feet on average thus we were able to spend an hour with these playful pups.

We then spent our last dive of the day at the Los Islotes Arch. Check out the video of these playful pups of the sea!

Here are the rest of day two's photos.