There’s only one thing to do when you’re a seal trying to escape a pod of orcas in B.C. waters: hide and hope they don’t find you.
That was the case for a seal near Campbell River on Canada Day, according to whale and bear watching guide Nick Templeman.
Templeman was doing a survey on transient killer whales with a research partner when he spotted some orcas at around 3 p.m. on Canada Day.
The pod of orcas had a mother and four kids.
Templeman told Global News that the family split up, but an orca with a bend in its spine stayed back.
Coverage of orcas on Globalnews.ca:
A commotion ensued among the orcas; there were two breaches and the mammals were subsequently seen in hunt mode.
Templeman moved his boat closer; that’s when he saw the seal and that the orcas were chasing it.
The seal saw a charter boat and swam in its direction.
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That seal then hopped up on the back of the charter boat, hiding itself behind the motor.
It remained there for just over half an hour, hiding as an orca approached.
The seal went back in the water once but it climbed back on the boat.
Finally, the charter boat dropped off the seal near a log boom in Frederick Arm.
Seals are just one example of prey for orcas, and there are numerous ways that they hunt them.
In colder parts of the world, they’ll find seals sitting on ice floes. Orcas deal with this by charging ice floes in close formations and creating waves, according to PBS.
They’ll then dive beneath the ice and push seal off the floe with a final wave created by their tails.
Orcas are also known to charge beaches where seals hide from their pursuers.