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On the weekend of January 19 to 21, Tony Gray and I joined in on a diving charter organized by Bruce Entus and the UBC AquaSoc. This trip was on Hornby Island, one of our favorite summer freediving spots for years. Tony and I jumped at the chance to go.

The main drawing card for this particular trip was the sealions. Several hundred sealions pull up at Heron and Norris rocks this time each year to wait for the herring run. This is just around the corner from the Hornby Island Diving lodge, operated by Rob Zielinski and Amanda Heath. Most people were planning to scuba dive with the sealions but my sneaky plan was to have a more interactive adventure and go in without tanks.

Much to my surprise, Tony was quite eager to join me on this bold and perhaps foolish plan. I was surprised not because Tony doesn't like freediving, but because he gets cold easily and his wetsuit is not the best. In fact, we have since dubbed it "Junkyard Suit".

I decided to wear my 3 mm silver Picasso suit. This is the same suit that Team Canada competed in at the World Cup in Nice. That was a bold move too but I figured that it was the warmest suit I had, considering how little water flows through that suit. Still, the neoprene was only 3 mm thick and the water temperature was a full 10 degrees C colder at Hornby than in the Mediterranean where the suit was last used.

The sealion dive was the first dive of the first day. After some last-minute gluing and stitching to Junkyard Suit, we headed down to the boat with the other divers. It felt quite funny to be on a dive boat with only mask, snorkel and fins. Two others on the boat had full technical gear, including two tanks each and an extra argon bottle each.

When we arrived at Norris rocks, the denuded islet was pretty much covered by the bodies of hundreds of barking stellar and California sealions. Interspersed with the sealions were several bald eagles, seagulls and cormorants. The sound was deafening and the smell overpowering as Rob and Amanda anchored the boat and gave us the talk. Several sealions swam close to the boat to check us out. After the briefing we jumped in and the excitement began.

We found ourselves in frigid water with over 40 feet of visibility. The hard rolling bottom was only 20 feet below us. Tony and I could see everything that the scuba divers below us could see. There were very large sleek wild animals swirling all around us. I found the experience both exhilarating and unnerving. Some sealions would swim slowly around and eye us, others would stop and watch, and others would dart up to us at full speed with mouth open and veer off within a couple of feet.

Tony was fully into the experience, doing forward flips, back flips and rolls to amuse our hosts. I still have an image burnied in my memory of Tony surrounded and dwarfed by several curious sealions as he did flips in mid-water. I tried some interaction myself and tried swimming quickly along the bottom. The reaction was immediate. One sealion charged at me, barking underwater. I slowed down and veered off. It seemed like a warning so I decided to keep to slow swimming. Still, I was buzzed several other times. Perhaps they didn't like my silver suit.

Gradually, the divers dispersed in different directions and the sealions became used to us. We had some time to explore the reef with only sporadic buzzings by small groups of sealions on reconaissance. After about 35 minutes in the water Tony was getting pretty cold and I was getting both cold and queasy.

We did the remainder of the dives that weekend on scuba with drysuits. The last dive on Sunday was also a sealion dive at the same location. I must admit that I felt safer on scuba. I think I felt safer because:

• I was always on the bottom so I couldn't be buzzed from below
• Since I am slower with tanks, the sealions are less alarmed by fast movement.
• All that equipment makes me (especially my back) feel more protected.

Given another chance, I would choose to freedive with sealions again but I would make the following changes:

• Wear a black rather than a silver suit.
• Keep to fairly slow swimming.
• Seek opportunities to interact with only one or two sealions at a time.

All in all it was an excellent weekend of diving at Hornby Island and special thanks go to Bruce Entus for organizing the trip. Hornby is best known for diving with sixgill sharks in the summer months but the super visibility makes for excellent diving in the winter as well.