A 9-year-old girl was dragged under water and bitten by a sea lion in a rare attack while she was at surf camp in California.
Corale Olsen told KSBW she was surfing with her brother and sister at Asilomar State Beach near Monterey when the sea creature suddenly appeared.
“It was right next to me, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, something really bad is going to happen’ — and it just bit me,” the 9-year-old recalled.
“We were pretty deep in the ocean,” she said, saying the “sea lion went under my instructor’s leg and then it came up to me and then it bit me and I got dragged under water.”
The brave young surfer felt “pain” as it bit her leg, and “then I was screaming,” she said, showing off puncture wounds and bruising to her leg.
Corale credits her instructor, Alex De Marignac, for rushing her and her siblings to safety as an on-duty lifeguard watched on.
The instructor recalled rushing to shore with “two kids under each arm and then one hanging off my neck.”
“We all made it in,” De Marignac recalled with relief — while saying he never expected such an attack.
“I have surfed in these waters since I was about 6 years old, but never ever seen something like that,” he told KSBW.
“I feel like most kids kind of like go after sea lions lightly, and nothing happens,” he said.
Sea lion bites are rare, but the animals can become aggressive if they are suffering from domoic acid poisoning, which is caused by a toxic algae bloom.
De Marignac believes the animal attacked because it was acting territorial.
“I think the rule of thumb is make sure to give animals their space. I think it’s totally fine to be curious, but I’d say never get a better look by getting closer to the animal,” he said.
Brave Corale, meanwhile, insisted the attack wont keep her or her siblings out of the water.
“If something happens, that doesn’t mean that you stop doing what you love,” she told the outlet defiantly.
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