Dramatic cell phone footage captured the startling moment that a sea lion grabbed a young girl’s dress and pulled her into the water at a harbor in Canada.

College student Michael Fujiwara — who does not know the girl — was filming the crowd gathering around the male sea lion at Steveston Harbour in Richmond, British Columbia on Saturday. Fujiwara told the CBC that the surrounding crowd had been feeding the sea lion bread crumbs.

The video shows the girl nearing the edge of the dock before the sea lion leaps from the water, grabs her dress and pulls her into the water. A man is then seen diving into the water himself to pull the girl out of the water. Fujiwara told the CBC that it did not appear that anyone was injured, but that the girl’s family seemed “pretty shaken up.”

Fujiwara referred to the animal a “killer sea lion,” on YouTube. However, Andrew Trites, director of the University of British Columbia’s Marine Mammal Research Unit, told NBC News that the sea lion likely wasn’t “attacking” the girl, but was trying to get more food.

“All I saw was an animal that was calm, curious and hungry,” he said. He noted that sea lions typically stay away from humans unless they’ve been “conditioned to expect food.”

Bob Baziuk, general manager of the Steveston Harbour Authority, told CNN that officials has been trying to convince visitors for years to stop feeding the wild animals.

“If you feed the animals like this, you’re asking for trouble,” he said.

Also on HuffPost

Bramble Cay Melomys

The Bramble Cay melomys had numbered in the hundreds in the 1980s but by the 2000s, its population had plummeted to under a dozen. The rodent was last spotted in 2009, and according to Hilton-Taylor, “all attempts to find it since have failed.”



High tides and surging seawater, a result of rising temperatures, have been pinpointed as the cause of the melomys’ demise. The animal, Barnosky told The Guardian in June, is a “cogent example of how climate change provides the coup de grâce to already critically endangered species.”



Australian scientists said they had hoped to prevent the extinction of the melomys by starting a captive breeding program for the animal.



By the time they launched a rescue mission to retrieve the creature, however, they discovered they were much too late.



“My colleagues and I were devastated,” Ian Gynther, a senior conservation officer in Queensland’s Department of Environment and Heritage Protection, told The Guardian.

Pinta Giant Tortoise

When Lonesome George died at the age of 100 in 2012, the world mourned. Believed to be the last Pinta giant tortoise on the planet, George, who’d lived in a research station on the Galapagos Islands, had become a poster animal for endangered species worldwide.



“It is a very sad story for all of us,” Christian Saa, a national park ranger, told The New York Times after the tortoise’s death.



“He was like a member of the family to me,” said Faust Llerena, the 74-year-old ranger who’d cared for George for decades. “To me, he was everything.”



The Galapagos Islands had once been home to a thriving population of giant tortoises. Hunting by sailors, pirates and merchantmen in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, however, decimated their numbers. More than 100,000 tortoises are believed to have been killed over that period.



Today, an estimated 15,000 giant tortoises remain on the island, all of them considered endangered and strictly protected by the Ecuadorian government.

Western Black Rhinoceros

At the turn of the 20th century, the four subspecies of black rhinoceros, numbering about a million in all, thrived in the savannahs of Africa. Today, that number has plunged to about 5,000 — a figure that doesn’t include a single Western black rhino, a subspecies now presumed extinct after last being sighted in 2006.



About 96 percent of black rhinos were killed by poachers between 1970 and 1992, according to the World Wildlife Fund.



The animals were — and continue to be — slaughtered for their horns, which are coveted in parts of Asia for their alleged healing qualities (a claim unsupported by science). A South-western black rhino is pictured above.

Vietnamese Rhinoceros

Like the Western black rhinoceros, the Vietnamese rhino was also hunted to extinction. The very last of the subspecies, a female, died in 2009 in the jungle in southwest Vietnam. Her skeleton was found a year later, her horn “crudely” hacked off and a bullet lodged in a foreleg.



A poacher had used a semi-automatic weapon to shoot the rhino, conservationists later discovered. The animal had survived the shooting and had fled, injured, through the dense jungle. She eventually died — possibly months later — near a grove of towering bamboo. "The gunshot did kill the rhino," Ed Newcomer, a US Fish and Wildlife Service agent, told the BBC. "It just took a long time to do it."



Newcomer was part of the team that investigated the rhino’s death. Of visiting the site where the Vietnamese rhino breathed her last, ending the lineage of an entire subspecies, Newcomer described being “incredibly” moved.



“It hits you like a brick,” he said.



The Vietnamese rhino was a subspecies of the Javan rhino, regarded as one of the most endangered mammals on Earth. Of the three subspecies of Javan rhino, only one — Rhinoceros sondaicus sondaicus — still exists. Fewer than 60 individuals survive on the planet, all of them in Ujung Kulon National Park in Java, Indonesia.

Rabbs' Fringe-Limbed Tree Frog

In September, Toughie, the loneliest frog on Earth, died at the age of 12. He’s believed to have been the very last Rabbs’ fringe-limbed tree frog on the planet, a Panamanian species known for being excellent climbers and gliders, with a most peculiar bird-like call.



Conservationist Mark Mandica, who worked with the amphibian and whose young son named the frog, said at the time that Toughie’s death served as a reminder of the many species that have been wiped out “before we even knew that they were there.”



Scientists first identified Toughie’s species in 2005 — the year a group of researchers went to central Panama in a race to collect live animals before a deadly chytrid fungus consumed the area.



It’s believed the Rabbs’ tree frog population did not survive the “catastrophic” fungus, which has been linked to climate change and poses a serious threat to amphibian populations worldwide. In Panama alone, the disease has led to the extinction of at least 30 frog species. Like the Rabbs’ frog, several of the lost species were newly discovered.



After being rescued from Panama, Toughie was brought to the Atlanta Botanical Garden, where he lived alone in a climate-controlled facility known as the Frog Pod until his death.



Toughie had been “a symbol of the extinction crisis,” a National Geographic obituary mourning the frog’s death said.

South Island Kokako

An ancient bird once widespread in the forests of southern New Zealand, the South Island kokako was driven to extinction by large-scale deforestation, ecosystem fragmentation and the introduction of non-native predators.



The bird was last spotted in 2007 and is presumed extinct. (Its close cousin, the North Island kokako, pictured here, is considered “at risk” though its population has been recovering in recent years.)



A kind of New Zealand wattlebird, the South Island kokako had slate-gray feathers with brightly-colored wattles and black masks. According to Maori legend, the kokako gave Maui, the mythological hero, water as he battled the sun. The bird filled its wattles with water to help quench the hero’s thirst. As a reward, Maui stretched the kokako’s legs to make them long and slender, allowing the bird to leap through the forest with ease to catch food. (The kokako, notes New Zealand’s Department of Conservation, is not great at flying. Instead, the bird preferrs to use its powerful legs to run and jump through the forest.)

Plectostoma charasense

Plectostoma is a genus of micro land snails that live in limestone outcrops in Southeast Asia. Several Plectostoma species are threatened with extinction and at least two, including Plectostoma charasense, have already been snuffed out (the related Plectostoma laidlawi is pictured above).



Plectostoma charasense were endemic to two limestone hills in Pahang, Malaysia: They once lived on moist mosses and liverworts covering trunks and rocks.



Habitat destruction, however, ultimately drove the species to extinction. Extensive quarrying for cement destroyed one of the hills where the snails were found. The tropical forests surrounding the second hill were converted into a palm oil plantation.



"Exhaustive" searches for the snails in 2010 and 2011 turned up nothing, said the IUCN. The snail was last seen in 2007.

Barada Spring Minnow

Syria’s Barada Spring was once known for its copious amounts of cold and clear water. It was also the home of a lone minnow, said to be the spring’s only endemic species.



But in the past decade, urbanization has posed a severe threat to both the spring and its sole inhabitant. In 2008, the water body was almost completely drained to meet the needs of a ballooning population, prompting a decline of at least 90 percent of the minnow population.



In 2014, the IUCN determined that the fish was likely extinct. The Syrian War, the conservation group said, may have also contributed to the species’ demise.

Christmas Island Pipistrelle

For at least a million years, the tiny Christmas Island pipistrelle had lived on the Australian territory whose name it bears. The micro-bat, which weighed about 3 grams (lighter than a nickel), had long thrived on the island, feeding on insects and roosting in large groups in tree hollows and decaying vegetation.



But its numbers started to dwindle in the 1980s, and by 2006, the pipistrelle population had plunged to about 50. In the years that followed, this “decline continued at an alarming rate,” according to the IUCN. In 2009, only 20 remained.



The cause of the bats’ demise is not entirely clear, though several invasive, introduced species, including black rats and feral cats, have been pinpointed as possible culprits. The island’s crazy ants could also have been part of the problem.



What is known, however, is that in 2009, scientists raised a red flag about the bats, warning the Australian government that “without urgent intervention there is an extremely high risk that this species will go extinct in the near future.” They sought permission to capture the remaining bats for a captive breeding program.



Government officials hemmed and hawed, initially rejecting the request. It took several months before the approval was granted.



Tragically, it was too little, too late. By the time the researchers returned to Christmas Island to search for the bats, they were only able to find a single animal.



On Aug. 27, 2009, that last remaining bat disappeared.



“Australian politics, and the bureaucracy that supports it, is failing in one of its most fundamental obligations to future generations: the conservation of our natural heritage,” wrote Australian environmentalist Tim Flannery following the pipistrelles’ extinction. “Australians need to take a look at ourselves.”



The pipistrelle had been Christmas Island’s only bat — one that consumed its body weight in insects every night. Scientists say its extinction could disrupt the ecological balance of the island.

Ua Pou Monarch

Like the Cryptic Treehunter, the Ua Pou Monarch, a bird native to Ua Pou (pictured), an island in the Marquesas, French Polynesia, was not identified until this century. First recognized in 2004, the bird was last spotted in 2010.



Researchers have since attempted to find the bird but their searches have been fruitless.



Habitat destruction devastated the range of the Ua Pou Monarch, said the IUCN. Introduced species, like the black rat, likely also played a role in the bird’s demise.

Ceratophysella sp. nov. ‘HC’

The final creature on this list is the smallest, and the most mysterious too. Certaophysella sp. nov. ‘HC’ is a new, as-yet undescribed species of Hypogastruridae Collembola, a kind of springtail (a tiny, insect-like omnivorous animal, pictured above).



It was first discovered by scientists in 2006 in a cave in the Hon Chong hills of Vietnam. The researchers had found a “healthy” population of the springtails at the time, but subsequent trips turned up no evidence of the creature.



The cave, scientists say, has been “heavily disturbed by tourism” in the years since the original discovery.



“For the conservation of the species, the regulation of the touristic activities and the restriction of tourism to pathways, would be crucial, and might allow the species to come back if it is still present in small cracks connected to the cave,” wrote the IUCN in its latest assessment.



As of 2016, however, the springtail was considered a “relict.”

Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.