"A first for me": Wild sea lion and octopus fight filmed in Canadian waters

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If you had to choose between a sea lion and an octopus in a fight, which would be more likely to win?

Lindsay Bryant saw that very situation unfold when she noticed a sea lion splashing around in the water on Vancouver Island.

“It was Thursday the 16th, just afternoon, just south of Nanaimo. I was just heading in for a cold water swim,” says Bryant.

Initially, she thought the creature was catching fish but soon realized it was struggling with something.

Upon closer inspection, she discovered that the sea lion was battling an octopus. Bryant recorded the fight, which lasted just under four minutes.

“That’s a first for me! An interesting swim… Sea lion versus octopus,” she wrote in the post.

Although sea lions are familiar to Bryant, she had never seen one fighting with an octopus before.

Daily Hive reached out to the Vancouver Aquarium to find out if this kind of tussle is a common occurrence.

Dr. Martin Haulena, the director of animal health, says these two species have a history.

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“So they obviously don’t have pans and marks and knives. So what they [sea lions] do is they grab on to larger fishes or trash around and break them up a little bit.”

According to Haulena, sea lions lock in their prey by biting down on one arm at a time and flinging the octopus’ body with all its strength to rip off an arm to swallow it whole.

While Steller sea lions often prey on octopuses, such an encounter is not often captured on camera, but Haulena says that it’s typical for these two to battle it out.

“It’s a very kind of normal behaviour. Nothing weird,” says Haulena.

So, to answer the question, who would win a fight, the sea lion or an octopus?

According to VancouverIsland.com, despite an octopus’ ability to wrap itself around the head of the sea lion, the latter can bite pretty fiercely, leaving the advantage to the sea lion.

However, in this video, it had to work a little harder due to one fiercely determined octopus who sadly was not victorious.

“As much as I hoped the octopus would survive, it looked like, in the end, the sea lion won,” says Bryant.

With files from Nikitha Martins