Swimming with Sea Lions

by Alexander Douglas-Mann

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of visiting Combe Martin Wildlife and Dinosaur Park in North Devon. It was a great day out, not only because wandering around and seeing the animals, a lot of which had babies at the time, was enjoyable and fascinating, but because I had something very special booked as well: Swimming with Sea Lions.

The day started off when my girlfriend and I arrived at the park around 11AM. The first things you run into when you enter are the wallabies, with their enclosure right next to a box that you can purchase wallaby food from for a 50p donation. They’re incredibly tame, and if you crouch down, holding out the food pellets for them, they’ll approach, pick it out of your hand and then stand there nibbling, letting you stroke them. Some of them seem to have become fiends for attention, and will wander up even if you don’t have any food, then look incredibly cute and happy whilst you stroke or scratch them.

We ended up spending far longer with the wallabies, and bought far more food for them, than we initially intended to. This meant that we only had time for a brief look around some of the lemur enclosures before heading off to watch the sea lion show.

The show itself was great. Even though the microphone wasn’t working, and the trainer's voice was hoarse from having to yell all week instead, watching what the sea lions could do was incredible. There are a few videos on the internet that have been recorded by visitors to the park, but they don’t do it justice at all. The height that they can jump out of the water and the strength they possess is almost ridiculous.

Now, the show was great and all, but it as nothing compared to what we got to do next. Going into the changing rooms with the three other people swimming that day, we were given wetsuits and life jackets and then went and sat in the incredibly cold pool (we were assured that during the summer months it was far warmer, which didn't do us a lot of good in mid-October). We swam a couple of lengths to warm up, which seemed to help the others more than it did me, and then Morgan the sea lion was brought through.

At first, it was pretty scary. He's much bigger up close, and the way he eats fish makes you wander what he'd do if he grabbed your hand. Luckily, he didn’t, because he's well-trained. He got in the water with us, swam around a bit, and then came and gave each of us a peck on the cheek. On my turn, the instructor got him to blow as well, which meant the side of my face got sprayed with bits of fish and sea lion spit; it was funny, but probably not pleasant if I couldn’t have immediately washed it off in the pool.

We then went through a whole host of activities: floating in the pool with Morgan alongside us, letting us stroke him; holding a pole over our heads that he jumped over; having him splash around in the centre of all of us, getting us soaked; and, best of all, pulling us around the pool as fast as he could. All being pulled around requires is a firm grip on his hips, rather than holding on to a flipper or anything. It's a brilliant experience, and doesn't seem to phase or bother Morgan in the least; he’s just happy to get the fish at the end.

After that, we got out and stood on the pool platform and each fed him a piece of fish, which he seemed grateful for. We all said goodbye and waved, Morgan waved back, and then we left to have hot showers and get changed again.

The rest of the day was spent travelling around the park seeing more lemurs, wolves, lions, meerkats and so on. I got to have an eagle land on my wrist during the falconry display, and we saw the lions being fed, which was terrifying, but none of it beat the swim with sea lions.

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