At the beginning of their dive, Katrin and Bill had dropped along the wall to about 85 feet and then started their collecting ascent. When they had reached 50 feet or so the seal suddenly appeared. It was 8- to 10-feet long and began swooping by them repeatedly, sometimes only a couple feet away from Katrin at its closest approach. Neither Bill nor Katrin ever felt like it was going into an aggressive or attack posture. But, needless to say, having a massive predator with razor sharp teeth and whose diet includes bigger-than-people-sized seals (like the ones Ross and I had seen at the end of our dive not long before) a couple feet away is no one's idea of the best way to spend a beautiful afternoon.

The divers immediately started working their way up along the wall and ledges to the surface, moving when the seal was away and hugging tight to the bottom when it was coming in for its close looks at them. The strong current and surge near the surface that had been an annoyance to Ross and me was a true concern for Katrin and Bill as they labored to stay close to the bottom while facing out to watch for the seal. Fortunately, the massive brown macroalgae growing in the shallows provided adequate tethers when needed and so the divers had a safe and controlled ascent through the surge zone.

We put the boat between the leopard and divers and the seal moved off and away from them. With Ross manning the helm we pushed the bow into the rocks. I leaned out over the bow to try to pull Katrin into the boat. But with all her gear she was too heavy for me to haul from that position, and with her fins and all that gear on she couldn't push herself up off the rocks enough to help

While her arm was in my grasp the boat surged back off the rock and Joanna, Jim, and I worked something akin to a pit stop, quickly but methodically inflating her suit and vest, then striping her out of her tank-buoyancy compensator combo and her weight belt before hauling her in over the side. The whole operation probably took a minute although it seemed longer than that at the time.

Time to get Bill. We ran up the bow up onto the rock for a moment and, still protected from the icy water by my dry suit, I jumped off. I helped Bill out of his fins and passed them and his collecting bag to Joanna on the boat as it pulled back onto the rock for a moment. Then we got his tank and weight belt off. Now able to stand erect on the rocks, Bill passed his weight belt to Joanna and Jim and dove aboard the boat as it pulled back in.

The waves coupled with Ross' boat handling prowess allowed him to keep the bow on the rock a bit longer this time so I was able to pass Bill's tank to Joanna right after Bill dove on. As the boat started back off the rock, but before it had lost contact, I dove over the bow. Had he seen me, I'm sure that my high school swim coach would have commented that my starts hadn't gotten any better in the 20-plus years since he last saw me do one.

With everyone safe and sound aboard the boat we pulled offshore to pack up our things and soon spied our "friendly" neighborhood leopard seal. In the interval since we'd last seen him he had captured his supper. The gentoo penguin was still alive when we first saw it and we watched the seal and its prey for about 20 minutes.

One must be very careful not to assign human motivations and behaviors to the seals and other animals, but it certainly appeared as if the leopard was "playing" with the gentoo. The seal stayed close to our boat and carried the injured bird around in its mouth for quite a while, often letting it go and recapturing it by a wing or foot. Eventually the seal killed the bird and soon thereafter disappeared from our view.