After three days of fishing in the Southern Ocean, these guys deserve a rest.

Home to a colony of Australian sea lions, Seal Bay was a great spot to get up close to the local wildlife. National park rangers take groups of 20 to 30 people down to the beach at a time. The logic is that the sea lions will not attack something bigger (like a group of 20 people) than themselves. As such, we were strongly cautioned not to get separated from the group (like, say by lying in the sand taking pictures and not noticing the group moving on…) and not to get too close to the sea lions as they could become aggressive.

The sea lions spend three days at sea catching fish and feeding. They then return to this beach to rest and restore their energy before heading back out to sea. As a result, we saw a lot of very sleepy looking sea lions.