Fishing salmon from kayak- inlet off Nootka Sound. Sprained wrist unloading boat, painful to paddle. Sea lion (Stellar's sea lion I think) harassed me closer and closer for nearly half an hour. Youngish bull I'd guess, at least 800 lbs. (prob. well over 1000 lbs.) He would surface, blow at me, then open his huge dog like mouth to show me his teeth and tonsils in what the internet says is a threat display. Felt like a threat to me!
Then he would roll over slowly onto his back as he sank, teeth showing all the way. He would dive just barely under the surface in the clear water and make a circle around me ten yards out underwater, and somewhere in the circuit he would turn and swim straight toward my kayak, diving a bit deeper to maybe 4 feet as he went under.
As he got closer and more aggressive I would yell at him, slap at him or poke at him with the paddle. Finally he was speeding up the sequence of blowing etc. and was coming up within 7 feet. He started coming up only behind me, really close, and with my painful wrist I could not turn the boat quickly. Scary. By then wind had pushed me near the mouth of a small river so I paddled up the estuary and he quit following me when we broke onto the shallow shelf. I beached on shore 100 yards up the river mouth, walked around awhile, retied some fishing gear.
To get away I paddled nearly a mile angling across the inlet to my vehicle off a logging road and didn't see him again. There is a resort there where only bears used to roam the shore. (Good chef in the restaurant!) I told them about the sea lion and they said that I am the third report this week, though with the others he just chased swimmers out the instant they jumped off the dock.
I was really afraid of the big dude, and if I'd had a firearm I would have killed him when he got inside of 8 feet. He was 8 or nine feet long, lots of blond color.
Didn't have my camera in the boat. Doggone. Looking up info online, he may have been protecting his territory. If I'd paddled quickly away from the area he might have left me alone, much like a mama black bear warns people to leave and get away from her. Pure guess. When he first started, I wondered if the repeated actions and postures were threat or if they were mating ritual and he wanted to mate with my orangey yellow kayak!
