A group of cold-dippers were caught off-guard early Monday morning when they had an unsuspecting sea lion encounter at Esquimalt Lagoon.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to Ennio Titarenko, who was one of the group in the water at the time, a sea lion approached them as they were getting deeper into the water, and lunged at them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The video captured shows just how close the sea lion got.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one was hurt and the sea lion didn\u2019t actually touch us\u2014just came at us pretty fast,\u201d Titarenko told Victoria Buzz.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He added that this was the first time he ever had an encounter this close, and he wouldn\u2019t do anything differently if it were to happen again.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, probably wouldn\u2019t change anything\u2014just keep an eye out and like this time, get out if a sea lion wants the spot more than we do,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), when encountering seals, sea lions or walruses in the water, as Titarenko did, it is best to move away slowly at the first sign of disturbance or agitation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If the animal starts to stare, fidget or dive into the water, you are too close.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A group of cold-dippers were caught off-guard early Monday morning when they had an unsuspecting sea lion encounter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":305830,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":{"0":"post-305829","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305829\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}