On the way to meet a shark, stop to fall in love with a sea lion
These may be the cutest underwater creatures in all the ocean. Meet the Australian Sea Lion you can stop to visit on your way to a dive with a Great White Shark.
For the past couple of years, while doing a degree in marine biology at the University of Adelaide, Kris Chan has had a side gig working on the cage-diving trips run by Rodney Fox Shark Expeditions.
They sail out of Port Lincoln and head south for a few hours to the wild Neptune Islands, where punters can safely experience the thrill of being in the water with the ocean’s most fearsome predators: great white sharks, up to 5m long.
On the way to the Neptunes, though, they’ll stop off at Hopkins Island, a little outcrop in Spencer Gulf that’s a renowned resting spot for young male Australian Sea Lions, which may be the ocean’s most adorable creatures. I mean, just look at this little fella: don’t you just want to hug him!
Chan, 27, grew up in Hong Kong and moved to Australia in 2016. A few years ago he was all set to become an airline pilot – he’d even done a bachelor degree in aviation management at the University of South Australia – before baulking at the cost of training, and decided instead to make a living from what he loves most in the world: scuba diving.
As well as working on the cage-diving trips, he juggled his marine biology studies with training people to dive in Adelaide, and working on an upcoming documentary about bull sharks in Sydney Harbour. He’s currently a dive instructor and guide on Lady Elliot Island, on the Great Barrier Reef.
Diving with the Sea Lions at Hopkins Island is a treat, he says; these creatures love to play with you, and will mimic your actions. If you do a barrel-roll in the water, they’ll do the same. They’ll observe your air bubbles, and blow their own. And when you swim off, they’ll follow, as if they can’t bear for you to leave.
“They’re so curious, and fun-loving,” he says. “No wonder they’re known as the ‘puppies of the sea’.”
As for this young male, it parked itself on the sand in three metres of murky water and seemed besotted with something it had perhaps never seen before: its own face, reflected off the glass dome of Chan’s underwater camera housing.
“I think he was trying to figure out what he was looking at,” he laughs.
To see more of Kris Chan’s photography go to: https://www.instagram.com/kris_ckc/?hl=en
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