Today started rainy and cloudy but turned into a beautiful sunny, if windy day. So we did a short walk in the Cow Bay estuary and then played tourist and went to the town of Cow(ichan) Bay to see the sea lions.

Sea lions congregate in the area to feed during the salmon run and then hang out on the breakwater. There are literally hundreds of them, hanging out on the dock. We loved watching them. They are constantly barking and making noise.

We saw them protect their little spot on the dock, often preventing another one, with some unkind words/barks, from getting up on the dock. Others were just chilling in the sunshine. These beasts are huge and they use their flippers to do things like climb out of the water onto the dock or raise their body to look up.

There were obviously some couples. This large male was on another section of dock and we saw him make his way over the gap between the sections and cuddle up with his ‘wife’. It was quite sweet.

We saw a couple swimming and even one fishing. Once he caught the fish he would raise his head above the water and shake it around a bit. The opportunitistic sea gulls were right there to pick up any left over pieces.

We were lucky we were upwind from the massive colony. They do not smell very nice at all and their waste makes quite a mess. There have been reports of boats that have been pooped all over and damaged by these beasts climbing up on them!

They usually stick around for less than a month, so we were glad we got to see some of these fascinating behaviours.