VANCOUVER –A group of killer whales made a surprise visit Wednesday morning to Vancouver’s inner harbour, breaching and tail slapping in the waters off Stanley Park at Lions Gate Bridge.
"I got a couple of money shots," said Dave Price, a dispatcher for Tymac Launch Service who snapped about 600 photos from the company vessel. "It was kind of like they were walking the seawall."
Price said he spotted the whales off Stanley Park shortly after 7:30 a.m. and watched for about half an hour before he returned to work and the whales proceeded towards Capilano light station and more open waters
He estimated eight whales in the group, including adults and at least one very young calf that still had a distinctive orange hue on its tail. "It didn’t look like they were feeding, just goofing around and slapping their tails."
The whales are known as transients and consume marine mammals such as harbour seals, sea lions, dolphins, porpoises, and even other types of whales. In comparison, resident killer whales are fish eaters.
John Ford, a whale researcher with the federal fisheries department in Nanaimo, said transient killer whales are threatened on the west coast and number about 300.
They do not live in true pods, instead forming temporary associations with other transients while travelling widely from southern B.C. to southeast Alaska.
While visits by killer whales to Vancouver’s inner harbour are rare (about once every three years), there is no shortage of harbour seals all the way up Indian Arm to attract them, Ford said. Transients are quiet stealthful hunters and remain underwater longer than resident killer whales, he added.
Ford recognized several of the whales from a catalogue of identification photos, including an adult male known as T102 that has been sighted by Canadian and U.S. colleagues 132 times since 1991.
"These whales are reasonably well known to us," Ford said.
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