San Francisco Travel Fisherman's Wharf

Pier 39 at Fisherman's Wharf can be a very busy place. On summer weekend afternoon expect it to be filled with a mixture of tourists browsing through the numerous shops selling "I Love SF" t-shirts and hoodies, families keeping the kids quiet with ice creams and people like us who are there to sneak through the crowds to see the Sea Lions.

If you time it right and get there on a Sunday morning, then the throng on the pier is not so bad. Even better if you then take the boardwalk on the left upper level and then go down to the lower level to get a close up view of these lovely creatures.

They seem a very sociable lot and are quite content to sleep next to or even on top of each other. There are usually a couple of large males keeping an eye on each other.

In the Autumn of 2009 it seems as if the Sea Lions got itchy feet and after rising in numbers to about 1,700, with the animals layered two and three deep on the docks, the sea lions departed as if following orders, leaving behind only a few stragglers.

Marine experts were a bit baffled as to reason for the departure, although food source seems to be the favourite idea. They believed the animals might have travelled 500 miles north, looking for fish and colder waters along the Oregon coast.