Sea Lion Baiting

I now have so many photos of people being stupid around seals and seal lions that I've created a separate folder on my computer for them. Living in Dunedin, we're surrounded by wild land and coastline. Just a couple of miles from here, the Otago Peninsula sticks out into the Pacific Ocean like a long green finger of land. And this is where the wild things are.

The first time we saw a sea lion, we were completely shocked. "Look," we said to each other, "a sea lion!" The naivete: we thought it was a mistake. Or an escapee from the zoo. It's sad really but seals, sea lions, penguins and dolphins are something that city folk like us see in a zoo, not on a nice Sunday morning drive to the beach.

But seals and sea lions are not cuddly and cute. Some of them are the size of a car: huge-shouldered, solidly encased in blubber, and covered in scars, like ugly red raised welts. These beasts look like they could easily swallow a child. They are, simply, disgusting. Despite this, Emeline and I have seen, on numerous occasions, people trying to get as close as possible to these aggressive car-sized beasts with flippers that sit, alert and ready to attack, on the beach. Here are some photos of some recent idiots. Just click on them for a closer look. And so now I photograph these people, safe in the knowledge that one day, maybe in a year, or a month, or maybe even this weekend, I'll see an old person get just a little too close, push the envelope just a little too far, and get within lunging distance of a huge bull sea lion that weighs more than a thousand pounds and feels very strongly about its personal space.

I know that time will come. It really will happen.

And I'm waiting.