Spend a few exciting hours snorkeling with up to 250 harbour seals that reside at Snake Island in beautiful Nanaimo!  This is an accessible year-round adventure for all capable swimmers in your family aged 12 and over! It’s sure to be the highlight of your Vancouver Island wilderness experience. Be prepared for a good frolic with the seals and some close encounters of the photography kind. These playful characters are as curious about you as you are about them!

While you’re observing and interacting with the harbour seals, look around you and discover some of the other fascinating marine life in our waters. There are countless varieties of bright and beautiful starfish for you to gaze upon. Anemones clinging to the rocks and forests of kelp will keep you entranced. Crab and other crustaceans are jostling about for nutrients. The magic and mystery of the sea will unfold in front of you!

Marlene has been out several times to Snake Island to swim with the seals. Marlene's snorkelled all over Asia, Turkey and even been swimming with the dolphins in Florida. She finds snorkeling at Snake Island to be a much more exciting and natural experience and certainly a lot more affordable! For less than you'll pay in other parts of the world, you get a much better, more natural eco-adventure!

Do you need experience? Certainly not, but you do need to be comfortable in the water and to know how to swim. Sundown Diving's staff are qualified to coach you on the finer skills of snorkeling. Is the water cold? Hey, this is Canada, not the Caribbean. It's a little chilly but the wetsuit that's supplied will keep you warm. It's a really comfortable way to spend the afternoon and when you've had enough, just climb back onto the boat and you're 10 minutes away from home! Will it be crowded? YES with seals, not people! This absolutely thrilling eco-adventure is in it's infancy, so no there won't be lots of other people out there, just lots of Harbour Seals!

According to Lonely Planet, snorkeling with the seals is the #1 attraction in Sydney Australia. Why let them have all the fun? Do it here for a lot less money!

For more information on current package rates and to book visit Sundown Diving's website now or call 1-888-773-3483. Please note that at The Buccaneer Inn we no longer directly sell snorkeling packages.

Your exciting 2 hour snorkel includes: 

• Professional snorkel coaching
•  Wet suit, boots, gloves, mask, snorkel & fins
• Boat transportation on a Coast Guard certified vessel
• All the time you need to fully enjoy this great natural experience (usually 1 to 1.5 hours, depending on the other members of your group!)
• And as a guest here, you get to use of our recreational equipment dryer to dry your wet snorkelling clothing and our after check out shower facility if you've already checked out of one our great rooms.

Learn more about Harbour Seals

Harbour Seals, (Phoca Vitulina) belong to the scientific order Pinnipedia, which includes seals, sea lions and walruses. 

Seals differ from sea lions in a number of ways, including having shorter, stouter flippers, and no visible ear flaps.

The harbor seal is probably the most wide-ranging and abundant pinniped. Four subspecies inhabit northern Pacific and Atlantic coastlines. A fifth subspecies, Phoca vitulina mellonae, is a landlocked group of harbor seals living in a freshwater lake called Seal Lake in Quebec.

The most abundant subspecies is P.v. richardsi—an estimated 200,000 individuals inhabit the eastern North Pacific from the Pribilof Islands to Baja California, Mexico.

Male harbor seals reach lengths of about 2.0 m (6.6 ft.) and weigh as much as 170 kg (375 lb.). Females are slightly smaller, measuring up to 1.7 m (5.6 ft.) and weighing in at about 150 kg (331 lb.).

Harbor seals swim with alternate back-and-forth movements of their hind flippers.

Harbor seals can remain submerged for up to 28 minutes and dive to depths of 90 m (295 ft.), however, they routinely forage in shallower waters. Harbor seals feed on squids, crustaceans, mollusks, and fishes.

Unlike most other pinnipeds, harbor seals are generally solitary and rarely interact with one another. When hauled out, adults maintain a meter or more (several feet) between them. Harbor seals are not highly communicative, but if threatened a seal may respond by snorting, growling, lunging or scratching.

Harbor seals along the Pacific coast usually give birth between February and July. The well-developed pup may measure up to 100 cm (39 in.) and weigh 12 kg (26 lb.). A pup nurses for four to six weeks. Its mother’s milk, containing as much as 45% milk fat, enables the pup to more than double its weight by the time it’s weaned.