Local Sea Lion Outsmarts Visiting Shark

Photo credit: www.grindtv.com 

In every tourist destination around the world, locals have learned the ins and outs of getting by when their hometowns are invaded by sprawls of vacationers.

Off the coast of Mexico’s Guadalupe Island, one clever baby sea lion has discovered a trick to surviving the influx of “tourists”.

The difference here is that the seasonal visitors are not humans, they’re great white sharks!

Great white sharks migrate to these waters yearly, and while they’re visiting their diets mainly consist of sea lions and seals. This is obviously a downside for the locals.

But this sea lion’s got it all figured out. When the sharks start rolling in, so do the action-seeking divers hoping to witness one of the world’s most feared predators. And the sea lion uses this to his advantage.

The baby sea lion saw the divers in their cages protected from the great whites, so the next time a threat appeared, he swam right behind the protective bars and joined the divers waiting for the shark to leave! Amazing!

Watch the encounter:

One of the divers, Martin Graf, said that this is not normal behavior and something they’ve never seen before.

He stated, “When a big female shark swam by, he darted into the cage, and as soon as the shark turned away from him, he swam out.” After the shark had gone, the baby sea lion was able to make it safely to shore.

Maybe this is the world’s smartest sea lion or maybe the “locals” of Guadalupe Island are beginning to learn tourist season survival tricks. Either way, this sea lion’s story is pretty darn cool!

Source: www.grindtv.com