Seal Bay National Park Tours

Travelwild offers 2 small group adventure tours which visit Seal Bay on Kangaroo Island, the 2 day Kangaroo Island Tour and the 3 day Kangaroo Island Tour.

Seal Bay on the South Coast of Kangaroo Island is insane! Think David Attenborough, sitting on a remote beach with a baby seal pup sniffing at your toes, and all around you a colony of one of the rarest Seals in the world sleep and play on the beach, all completely natural, and this is Seal Bay

Officially known as Seal Bay Conservation Park, it has been set up to protect the worlds thrid largest colony of Australian Sea Lions. The fact that they are even here is a story in it's self, basically the Australian Sea Lion population was decimated by the Sealing industry and the killing of Seals only became officially outlawed in 1972. Seal Bay is essentially a number of small coves and beaches which is protected from the open ocean with a series of natural reefs. In the sealing days it was too dangerous to navigate the reefs by ship so the seals were left alone. It is anyone’s guess just how long this colony has occupied the Seal Bay site, it is more than likely tens of thousands of years.

Australian sea lions have a very unusual breeding pattern, most seals breed on a 12 month cycle, breeding and giving birth at the same time each year. Australian Sea Lions are on an 18 month cycle, and interestingly the cycles are not in sync with other colonies.

Due to the sensitive nature of the Seal Bay environment, and the fact that there is a colony of rare seals living there, actual access to the beach at Seal Bay is restricted, visitors need to either book onto a ranger guided tour or join a tour company who can access the beach.

Austrlaian Sea Lion

The Australian Sea Lion (Neophoca cinerea) is a species of sea lion that breeds only on the south and west coasts of Australia. Today there are about 10,000 Australian Sea Lions following the introduction of the Australian National Parks and Wildlife Act of 1972 which prohibited a harvest that began in earnest as soon as Europeans colonised the continent.

The Australian Sea Lion inhabits the ocean around Australia, and nowhere else. They only eat at sea, where they hunt fish, squid, and other sea creatures. They have front-flippers that allow them to propel quickly through water and be more agile on land by being able to walk on all four flippers.

The breeding cycle of the Australian sea lion is unusual within the pinniped family. It is an 18 month cycle and is not synchronized between colonies. The duration of the breeding season can range from 5 to 7 months and has been recorded for up to 9 months at Seal Bay on Kangaroo Island.

Bulls do not have fixed territories during the breeding season. The males fight other males from a very young age to establish their individual positions in the male hierarchy and during the breeding season, dominant males will guard females for the right to breed with her when she comes into oestrus. A female comes into season for about 24 hours within 7 to 10 days after she has given birth to her new pup. She will only look after the new pup and generally fights off the previous season's pup if it attempts to continue to suckle from her.

Male Australian Sea Lions are also known to kill young,as an act of defence of territory.

Two females from the July 2001 breeding season were observed having their first pups where they were born. The females were part of a research project where 55 pups from that season were observed from the date of birth and their birth locations were also recorded. The females have proven a theory that the birth sites of the females are extremely important in their selection of future birth sites for their pups, which is another reason why the protection of existing colonies is so important to the species. Source