VIDEO: Sea Lion Hides from Sharks on Jetski During Mavericks Surf Session

Dashel Pierson
·2 min read
60

In case it wasn’t abundantly clear, Mavericks is a scary place to surf.

It’s cold, it breaks way out to sea, it’s crawling with great white sharks (and the big ones, too, not those tiny juveniles frequently seen in Southern California), and oh yeah, it’s the biggest, meanest, most terrifying wave California has to offer.

And it’s not just the surfers, or the spectators behind the safety of their screens or in-person on the Pillar Point cliffside that get spooked by the wave; the locals, the real locals, are scared of Mavs, too. Like this sea lion seen below.

On Friday, January 5th, a sea lion hitched a ride on a surf safety jetski in the channel at Mavs – perhaps as a friendly interspecies gesture, maybe because it was sick, or possibly because there was something bigger lurking below looking for lunch.

Drake Stanley, a PWC operator and member of the Mavericks Rescue Team, was piloting the jetski when the sea lion hopped aboard.

“I named her Bubbles,” he captioned a clip of the pinniped playfully joining him on the jetski, then adding: “we gave her to Marine Rescue.”

Although there was no explanation as to why Bubbles was exhibiting such strange, abnormally friendly behavior, commenters on the clip has an idea:

“100% escaping a shark 🦈”

“Yup, if the seal is on the ski, then the tax man is lurking below.”

“Probably getting away from a shark 🦈”

“That ski is somewhere between breakfast and lunch 🦈”

A jetski ghost riding the whip, sea lions seeking refuge from sharks on jetskis, one of the biggest days in recent memories…this season at Mavericks has been wild.

And it’s not over yet.

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