Surf instructor saves 9-year-old girl after cowardly sea lion attacks

“I had two kids under each arm and one hanging off my neck, and, yeah, we all made it.”

We older surfers, we brave players on the sea, are used to many dangers as we ply our favorite trade. Ice-cream headaches, not living up to personal expectations, dropping our wax in the sand then getting rug-burned chests, forgetting to hang the parking pass on the rearview mirror then remembering when all the way down on the beach and having to have a long internal debate on if a ticket would be preferable to running back up then self-chastising for such overt laziness, etc.

Yes, the surfing life is a tough one, but we are wizened and hard so can take it. Something quite other, though, when a young sapling is treated rudely whilst participating in a surf lesson but that is exactly what happened to Corale Olsen. The 9-year-old was at a surf camp with her brother and sister at Asilomar State Beach, very near lovely Carmel-by-the-Sea when a rage-filled sea lion attacked.

“It was right next to me, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, something really bad is going to happen.’ Then, it just bit me,” she shared with the local news affiliate. “It was pain, and I was screaming.”

Thankfully, her quick-thinking surf instructor Alex De Marignac was there. “I have surfed in these waters since I was about 6 years old. Never, ever seen something like that,” he said, adding, “I had two kids under each arm and one hanging off my neck, and, yeah, we all made it.”

Corale was rushed to the emergency room and diagnosed with puncture wounds and bruising though now she, too, is wizened and said she would certainly be back in the water and soon, declaring, “If something happens, that doesn’t mean that you can stop doing what you love.”