"I've been stung by a sting ray, pinched by crabs, bitten by tiny fish. But a sea lion?" That's the incredulous reaction of 15-year-old Phoebe Beltran after being attacked by the latter over the weekend in Southern California, during her audition to be a junior lifeguard cadet, reports NBC News. The teen says she was in the water about 25 feet off the coast of Long Beach on Sunday, at the end of her 1,000-yard tryout swim at Alamitos Beach, when she suddenly felt a flash of pain. "Out of nowhere, I feel something biting my arm," she tells KTLA. "I saw a shadow of it, and all I'm thinking is, 'Please, don't be a shark. Please, don't take off my arm. And please, don't kill me."
It wasn't a shark, however, but a sea lion, which KTLA notes can grow to be up to 6 feet long and 700 pounds. Phoebe, who says it was hard to tell what was attacking her because she was "too scared to face it head-on," finally broke free of the sea lion and, with the help of lifeguards, made it back to shore, where her mother, Bibi Beltran, was waiting. "Somebody yelled 'Shark!' and we all rushed toward the shore," Beltran says, per CBS News, though she adds she didn't know it was Phoebe until the teen emerged from the water with "her arm bloody."
The attack comes not long after experts had warned about sea lions in the Golden State, blaming a neurotoxin in the algae blooms plaguing California's waters that make the creatures especially aggressive. "In my 25 years of service, I've never heard of something like this happening before," says Gonzalo Medina of the Long Beach Fire Department. Phoebe, for her part—who was bruised and bitten, with scratches on her arm and hand—isn't afraid to eventually get back into the water and finish her lifeguard test. "I love the beach. I love the ocean. I love swimming," she tells KTLA. (More sea lions stories.)
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