THE AMOROUS ELEPHANT SEAL

The rule about diving with wild animals is never to interact with them, but rather to let them interact with you – however, things can go horribly wrong.

The Sea of Cortez near Mexico, is a temperate sea with the biggest range of water temperatures of anywhere in the world. At the height of summer, the water can be icy cold or it might be comfortably warm. Who knows?

There is little in the way of coral in the Sea of Cortez, but the ever-changing water temperatures and copious amounts of sunlight combine to produce at times, plankton levels that support massive amounts of marine life. Whale sharks, manta rays and even grey whales are quite common.

That's why Jamie Curtis left the UK, set up a dive centre there and made a new life for himself in this part of Mexico. Jamie was after some much needed publicity for his venture, which is why he soon invited a British diving magazine photographer to visit.

But it's not that easy to find the stars of the show and to dive with them. They are pelagic animals, forever wandering the vast emptiness of the ocean. You need good luck to enjoy an exciting mid-water encounter. So with no coral reefs to speak of, where are the territorial animals that form the reliable and permanent attraction that would make a diver happy to spend valuable vacation time here? Jamie fondly recounts this tale.

Los Islotes are 80 km (50 miles) from the town of La Paz. Some ragged rocks towering from the water, a rough red cake capped with guano like icing-sugar. And what's that noise? Los Islotes is a California sea lion colony or “rookery”.

Diving close to California sea lions can be a heart-stopping experience. The females behave like ladies. A graceful, young female quickly investigates what she clearly thinks is a strange air-bubbling creature. She appears in a moment. A pirouette, a brisé, two arabesques and she is gone. There's hardly time to get a successful photograph. The pups behave like naughty children, but the bulls act like angry fathers.

A successful bull will breed with as many females as he can and enthusiastically guards his harem. It has been known for one male to service 40 females. It all depends on his size and strength. Each bull has his own clearly defined territory for which he has fought off other bulls. The males seem to devote most of their time to maintaining a dominant position in that territory. They are large and powerful and will aggressively defend their harem against incursions from other males. That's what all the barking is about.

During the first year that Jamie was set up for diving, an intruder joined the sea lions’ rookery. Bigger than any of the massive sea lion males, a solitary young elephant seal had opted to move in with them. He wasn't in any danger from the sea lions but he was obviously very lonely. No doubt they had frequently told him to go off and seek his own kind, but he was looking for love.

The female sea lions may have rejected his amorous advances but he found other more compliant partners in the unsuspecting scuba divers that came to visit the sea lion colony at Los Islotes. The magazine photographer heard about this phenomenon and chose this as his major: it made the perfect photo opportunity.

Photographers can make terrible buddies. The anonymous buddies that chose this photographer to go diving with, probably regret it to this day.

“I would go in with an unsuspecting buddy because I knew exactly what was going to happen,” the photographer recalled later. “The elephant seal would position itself above the chosen diver, then wrap its flippers around them. And what do you do if an elephant seal wants to mate with you? Well, there's not a lot you can do.”

Naturally, he was partnered with a different unsuspecting buddy each time. There were few that wanted to repeat the experience. Then it nearly went horribly wrong.

As had become usual on each dive, he watched fascinated as the enormous animal stealthily approached its target diver from above and behind, lining him up. However, this time the animal simply swam closely above the other diver, mirroring his movements.

“I was all ready to get this marvellous picture and everything was lined up for the shot. The other guy's swimming along, oblivious to what's happening, and the elephant seal is hovering above him getting ready to grab and do its best. I'm ready with my camera – and then, to my amazement, the elephant seal opens its mouth.

It opened its mouth wider and wider. The animal had teeth reminiscent of piano keys. It then plunged down and encompassed my buddy's head in the voluminous opening.

Instead of taking the all-time, award-winning natural history picture, I resorted to hitting the huge animal as hard as I could with my camera. It was like hitting a sofa with a paper handkerchief. It didn't seem to make much impression, yet it had the desired effect. The elephant seal released his victim, looked at me reproachfully and swam off offended.”

Later, at the surface, the other diver asked what happened.

“It suddenly went dark down there.”

There are some things that are better left unexplained.