{"id":309613,"date":"2025-11-27T05:40:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-27T05:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/309613\/"},"modified":"2025-11-27T05:40:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T05:40:10","slug":"curious-sea-lion-surprises-2-friends-taking-a-cold-plunge-near-victoria-bc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/309613\/","title":{"rendered":"Curious sea lion surprises 2 friends taking a cold plunge near Victoria &#8211; BC"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\tDescrease article font size<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\tIncrease article font size<\/p>\n<p>A sunrise dip near Victoria took a surprising turn on Monday morning when a <a href=\"https:\/\/globalnews.ca\/tag\/sea-lion\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">sea lion<\/a> lunged at two swimmers.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1763808739_201_70c8fc80.png\" alt=\"\" style=\"position:absolute;width:1px;height:1px\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer-when-downgrade\"\/><\/p>\n<p>It happened at Esquimalt Lagoon, where Ennio Titarenko and his friend were taking a plunge and recording it on video.<\/p>\n<p>However, about five minutes into their chilly dip, a sea lion showed up and hung around at a distance \u2014 at first.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" width=\"170\" height=\"225\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1763808740_130_national.jpg\" alt=\"For news impacting Canada and around the world, sign up for breaking news alerts delivered directly to you when they happen.\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\tGet breaking National news<\/p>\n<p>For news impacting Canada and around the world, sign up for breaking news alerts delivered directly to you when they happen.<\/p>\n<p>Before they knew what was happening, the sea lion leapt towards them with a big splash, startling them both.<\/p>\n<p>Titarenko, a former commercial diver, has spent a lot of time in the water around animals and told Global News they just wanted to get out of the sea lion\u2019s way.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI wasn\u2019t really fazed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve spent a ton of time around sea lions, I\u2019ve scratched their belly before like puppies, I knew that he was probably either just curious or wanting to show us who\u2019s boss, but I had no fear that he was going to hurt us or bite us or anything like that.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\tTrending Now\n\t<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/globalnews.ca\/news\/11540944\/polar-vortex-early-winter-canada\/\" class=\"c-posts__inner\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"c-posts__thumbnail\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1764222010_547_Canada-snowstorm.jpg\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"336\" height=\"224\" alt=\"\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\tPolar vortex set to bring \u2018harsh early start to winter\u2019 across Canada\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/globalnews.ca\/news\/11543316\/canada-new-alert-system-extreme-weather\/\" class=\"c-posts__inner\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"c-posts__thumbnail\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1764222010_18_22507856.jpg\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"336\" height=\"224\" alt=\"\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\tCanada launches new alert system to protect people in extreme weather\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Story continues below advertisement<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDuring the moment, I was like, OK, it\u2019s very clear he wants us to leave, so we\u2019re just going to leave.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The friends don\u2019t want to give up on their cold plunges, so they hope this was just a once-in-a-lifetime experience.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\tMore on Science and Tech<br \/>\n\t\t\tMore videos\n\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t&amp;copy 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Descrease article font size Increase article font size A sunrise dip near Victoria took a surprising turn on&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":309614,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[138374,49,48,295,66,105368,323],"class_list":{"0":"post-309613","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-bc-sea-lion-video","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-environment","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-sea-lion","14":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309613","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=309613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}