SFU student Michael Fujiwara was on the dock when he saw the large, male sea lion approach, so he started filming it as a crowd gathered around the animal.
He says a family began feeding it bread crumbs while the young girl got close to the edge of the dock.
"And it initially jumped up to the girl to read her I guess," he said of the incident seen at the 1:35 mark of the video above. "And then it came back up a second time, but this time grabbing the girl by the waist and dragging her down into the water."