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Lindsay Bryant was preparing to swim when a sea lion flailing in the water nearby caught her attention.
“At first I thought, ‘Oh, he’s just fishing,’” said the woman from Nanaimo, British Columbia. “Then I saw him struggling a little bit… so that’s when I pulled out my phone.”
Bryant watched this for about five minutes, but it wasn’t until he returned home and was able to enlarge the footage that he realized what he had witnessed.
“I thought, ‘Oh my God. That’s crazy,’” he said. “It was an octopus.”
featured videoThe entire battle between a sea lion and an octopus filmed by Lindsay Bryant of Nanaimo, BC
Thursday’s battle between the aquatic mammal and the eight-limbed mollusk took place just south of Nanaimo, about 110 kilometers north of Victoria on Vancouver Island.
Bryant, who swims several times a week, says sea lions are an almost daily sight, but he has never seen an octopus, much less a sea lion fighting one.
The entire event took place about 100 meters from where she was, and she could hear the sea lion breathing heavily and regularly disappearing below the surface and then re-emerging, sometimes throwing the octopus into the water.
“I actually thought the sea lion was in danger… It just wasn’t normal behavior.”
Formidable enemies
Two species of sea lions inhabit Vancouver Island: Steller sea lions, which breed in the north, and California sea lions, which breed in the south. Each is a type of pinniped, a group of aquatic mammals that also includes seals and walruses.
Steller and California sea lions can be seen in Nanaimo, but the Steller is larger and darker.
Andrew Trites, director of the marine mammal research unit at the University of British Columbia, said in an email to Breaking: that based on his footage, Bryant witnessed Steller eating a large octopus.
A group of Steller sea lions near Sand Point, Alaska, in a 2004 photograph. (Eastern Aleutians District/The Associated Press)
Trites also said that while octopuses are common prey for Steller sea lions, it is unusual for this type of encounter to be captured on film.
“The challenge for a sea lion is to swallow an octopus without the octopus using its eight arms to grab the sea lion’s head while swallowing it whole,” he said. “The sea lion would suffocate.”
“The sea lion’s solution is to bite one arm at a time and throw the octopus’s body with all its force to rip off an arm and swallow it whole. They do this at the surface because they can get more torque in the air than they can. underwater.”
Looking back, Bryant says he remembers seeing smaller pieces thrown up that at the time he thought might have been fish, but “which I guess were octopus legs, unfortunately.”
And octopuses can defend themselves in other ways too. In 2010, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game published an account of a Stellar sea lion dismembers approximately 25-pound octopus – an event captured by marine biologist Sherry Tamone who said it appeared to be a tough fight.
“The octopus can wrap itself around the sea lion’s head and bite quite hard. Its beak looks a bit like that of a parrot and each bite releases some unpleasant chemicals,” the article is quoted as saying.
His account mimics that seen by Bryant, with the sea lion fighting for several minutes with its opponent.
“He was almost gasping for air, like he was trying to stay above the surface,” Bryant recalled.
Other battles between sea lions and octopuses
There have also been other memorable battles between pinnipeds and octopuses captured in other parts of the world.
In 2010, National Geographic captured video showing an australian sea lion dragging a large octopus to the surface so you can breathe while you eat it slowly, bite by bite.
In 2018, an octopus is displayed at the Oceanopolis maritime center in Brest, western France. (Fred Tanneau/AFP/Getty Images)
And in images from 2018 of a New Zealand fur seal hits kayaker with octopus went viral, although Colleen Reichmuth, who runs the Pinniped Laboratory at the University of California, Santa CruzHe told NPR that it’s normal for animals to hit larger prey to consume it and that it probably has nothing to do with the boat being nearby.
A memorable moment
Bryant isn’t sure what happened to either animal, though she’s pretty sure the sea lion won, but not without a little pushback from the octopus.
“I definitely think he put up a good fight,” he said.
She says she has had many memorable encounters with marine life, but this one stands out because of how surprising it was.
“It was just crazy,” he said. “I was literally sitting on my couch and couldn’t believe it when I zoomed in. I was like, ‘No way,’ because it made so much sense how it all happened.
“I wish, looking back now, I knew exactly what was going on, but in the end it was a pleasant surprise.”
Sea lion versus octopus: Surprise battle caught on video | Breaking: