| | |  Travel & Outdoors 
Sea Lion Pups Photographed Off Mexico
 Telegraph UK
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February 11, 2010
| | Sea lion pups pose for the camera in the Sea of Cortez, Mexico. (Rory Moore/Barcroft Media) | |
An underwater photographer has captured pictures of sea lion pups playfully swimming in the warm waters off Mexico.
The pair, thought to be young sisters, kept giving their watchful mother the slip so they could swim over to investigate British marine biologist Rory Moore.
Mr Moore was tagging manta rays near Los Islotes, Mexico when the chance encounter with the sea lions happened.
The inquisitive scamps followed Mr Moore for over an hour as he worked in the shallows, checking their reflections in his camera and playing with the bubbles from his scuba gear.
"They were like playful puppies," he said. "Their mum kept coming over and shepherding them back onto nearby rocks as if she was telling them off. She was big and quite scary.
"But they kept jumping back into the water and coming straight over to see what I was doing.
"As mammals they are highly intelligent. Even as youngsters they are very curious about what is going in their surroundings.
"They were most intrigued by their own reflections in the camera. I was using a reflective cover, called a 'dome port', over my lens, which helps produce better underwater images.
"The sea lions were using it like a mirror and eyeing themselves up. They had probably never seem their reflections like that before."
Mr Moore was in the Sea of Cortez as part of a project to study manta rays. Scientists think the rays are returning to the area once more after being practically wiped out from the area through over-fishing. |
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