When it’s a nice day outside, even in January you’ll likely find Shauna Bradford, her husband Dylan and their six year old daughter Tayla in their boat on the water near their home in Ladysmith.

“Being on the water and fishing means everything to us,” said Shauna.

And that’s where they were crabbing and fishing Sunday, Jan. 18 when they had an experience of a lifetime, all captured on video.

Watch below:

“He’s right here, he’s right here. Oh my God,” Bradford can be heard saying in the video.

You can hear the excitement and maybe a bit of nervousness in the voices of Bradford and her family.

“We slowed down to go check our crab traps and my husband Dylan said oh look there’s some orcas, oh wait there’s another orca and then we noticed what looked like a seal in the middle of them,” Bradford told CHEK News.

The water then became calm and they thought the encounter was over, but it wasn’t.

“An orca just came up right under the boat and the seal came right under the boat, almost like bonked into the side of the boat too,” she said.

Then, seeing a chance at survival the seal jumped out of the water, onto their boat and out of danger.

It stayed in a well between the main motor and kicker motor as the killer whales circled the boat.

“It’s OK,” Bradford can be heard saying to the seal.

“The whales were circling us, they could see the seal on the back of the boat after it hopped in and the whales were kind of like toying with us,” she continued.

For six year-old Tayla it was a front row seat to nature as the three killer whales hunted for the seal but her mom says it was also a valuable learning moment.

“She wanted us to start the motor and go but we had to let her know it’s not as easy as that you can’t do that when you’re in a certain distance of a whale.”

She says the entire encounter felt like 30 minutes but it was closer to 10 or 15 and after a while the seal felt safe enough to make a swim for it.

“After about ten minutes or so, just slowly it kind of looked at us like OK, I think I’m going to make a run for it,” she said.

And sure enough as the whales went off in one direction the seal appeared to take off in the other. They assume it made a safe getaway, as they too fired up and called it a day on the water with memories to last a lifetime.

You can follow the Bradford’s adventures on Instagram here.