Snorkelling with Seals at Montague Island
I love watching wild animals in their natural habitat. Snorkeling with seals at Montague Island was on top of my bucket list of things to do.
It was a long drive down to Narooma on a long weekend, a bit over 5 hours from the lower north shore of Sydney.
We took the earliest boat tour with Montague Island Tours as it was meant to be the best time to snorkel with seals. The ocean conditions are usually a bit calmer in the morning which means we could swim at more spots than when the swell picks up.
Montague Island Nature Reserve is a protected reserve and home to the largest seal colony in NSW. Due to the lack of predators on Montague Island, seals based there are at the top of the food chain. The highest number of fur seals are seen during winter and spring, but seals reside at Montague Island all year round. Other wildlife around Montague Island includes penguins, dolphins, and many marine and bird life. You can only get to the island with an authorised tour operator which means the animals are not threatened.
We first got to Narooma wharf where we were dressed into our 5mm wetsuits to look like a skinnier version of seals. Then we tried on the fins to make us swim a little bit faster. Unfortunately we were nowhere as fast as seals in the ocean.
The boat sped through the choppy water to Montague Island, about 9km off the coast of Narooma, where we were given the disappointing news that the north easterly swells that has been around for the whole week made the top area of snorkeling very choppy and not a good condition to swim in at all.
We jumped into the cove between two rocks with Australian seals on one side and New Zealand fur seals on the other side. Embarrassingly, I still can't tell which is which, but they both looked so adorable. My love for seals doesn't discriminate against any race.
Every now and then, a seal would jump in and swim around us or past us. Few swam a few metres underneath my belly and one swam straight into our camera. We spent the few hours looking for the seals like weird stalkers. If the seal liked us, it stayed around and do flips around us. If the seal didn't like us, it disappeared real quick and there was no chance of catching up to it.
We saw some Port Jackson sharks while waiting for seals.
We swam along the coastline of the island and saw a few seals playing around in the inlets where the waves were crashing into the rocks. The boat picked us up at the other end. The trip felt like it was over way too quick. Even though we had been in the water for hours and my fingers really wrinkled up, but I would love to stay in the water with seals all day long.
It was a fantastic experience and one that I would love to come back and do all again. Hopefully there will be no north easterly swells next time.
Remember to bring a waterproof camera, and remember to fully charge it! Someone in our tour turned up with flat camera battery which was very unfortunate.
It was a long drive down to Narooma on a long weekend, a bit over 5 hours from the lower north shore of Sydney.
We took the earliest boat tour with Montague Island Tours as it was meant to be the best time to snorkel with seals. The ocean conditions are usually a bit calmer in the morning which means we could swim at more spots than when the swell picks up.
Montague Island Nature Reserve is a protected reserve and home to the largest seal colony in NSW. Due to the lack of predators on Montague Island, seals based there are at the top of the food chain. The highest number of fur seals are seen during winter and spring, but seals reside at Montague Island all year round. Other wildlife around Montague Island includes penguins, dolphins, and many marine and bird life. You can only get to the island with an authorised tour operator which means the animals are not threatened.
We first got to Narooma wharf where we were dressed into our 5mm wetsuits to look like a skinnier version of seals. Then we tried on the fins to make us swim a little bit faster. Unfortunately we were nowhere as fast as seals in the ocean.
The boat sped through the choppy water to Montague Island, about 9km off the coast of Narooma, where we were given the disappointing news that the north easterly swells that has been around for the whole week made the top area of snorkeling very choppy and not a good condition to swim in at all.
We jumped into the cove between two rocks with Australian seals on one side and New Zealand fur seals on the other side. Embarrassingly, I still can't tell which is which, but they both looked so adorable. My love for seals doesn't discriminate against any race.
Every now and then, a seal would jump in and swim around us or past us. Few swam a few metres underneath my belly and one swam straight into our camera. We spent the few hours looking for the seals like weird stalkers. If the seal liked us, it stayed around and do flips around us. If the seal didn't like us, it disappeared real quick and there was no chance of catching up to it.
We saw some Port Jackson sharks while waiting for seals.
We swam along the coastline of the island and saw a few seals playing around in the inlets where the waves were crashing into the rocks. The boat picked us up at the other end. The trip felt like it was over way too quick. Even though we had been in the water for hours and my fingers really wrinkled up, but I would love to stay in the water with seals all day long.
It was a fantastic experience and one that I would love to come back and do all again. Hopefully there will be no north easterly swells next time.
Remember to bring a waterproof camera, and remember to fully charge it! Someone in our tour turned up with flat camera battery which was very unfortunate.
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