This is my fourth year of living on the water and I think up to this point I had seen sea lions only twice. Then here I was paddling saw a large lump floating in the river a few yards away from me. I thought it was a log. But then its head rose and with a snort it dove underwater. A sea lion! As you can see from the photo, I was just upriver of the Sauvie Island bridge.
One does not want to get to close to a sea lion, so I followed the trajectory of where I was near shore and floated downriver parallel to the marine mammal. It was huge. It must have been sleeping because its head would come up and breathe in a rhythmic pattern. If I recall correctly, I would count six seconds and then the head would go back down. Eventually it woke up, turned and looked at me, dove, and I didn't see it again. Once it disappeared and I didn't know where it was, I paddled all the way over to the shore, just in case.
A week later when I was paddling I came across two sea lions, downriver ahead of me. They were barking loudly with a sound I'd never heard before. I tried to paddle really fast to keep them in my purview but they were moving along at a good clip and not long afterwards I lost sight of them.
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