About a dozen people had a front-row seat as four Bigg’s orcas, including a new calf, frolicked near the Ogden Point Breakwater on Thursday.
Amy MacCutchan was having a tough day at the B.C. Cancer Centre at Royal Jubilee Hospital, where, as a medical secretary, she sees every day the suffering, worry and pain of so many.
Heading home on the afternoon of April 30, she saw a social-media post that there were orcas in the Inner Harbour.
So she picked up her 12-year-old son, Charlie, and headed down to the Ogden Point breakwater, hoping an orca sighting would relieve the stress of her day. MacCutchan got just that.
Along with about a dozen others, she had a front-row seat as four Bigg’s orcas, including a new calf, frolicked in the calm waters. “They were so close, we could almost touch them,” MacCutchan said. “It was just what I needed. I felt lifted … my spirits felt lifted. It’s like it was almost like a little bit of adrenaline. It was a great moment. We’ll never forget.”
MacCutchan said it was a wonder to see the orcas swim past so close over and over at the end of the breakwater, angling sideways as if they were watching the humans.
“The mom and the baby were off to the side, and the baby was so cute, so small. The little baby was jumping around the mom, kind of like practising being a whale.”
“We all want to think that they were interacting with us, but maybe they just wanted to eat us for lunch.”
The pod was identified by several whale-watching companies as the T049As, frequent visitors to the area. They cruised into the Inner Harbour as far as the causeway and stayed for about 15 minutes, likely searching for seals, and continued the hunt around the mouth of the harbour near the breakwater.
The pod’s matriarch, 40-year-old T49A, also known as Nan, gave birth to a new calf in March. It has been designated T049A7, and is Nan’s seventh calf.
The pod also included Nan’s 15-year-old son, Nat, which was leading a group of six in the Inner Harbour hunt.
It wasn’t immediately known whether the orcas found a seal, but their appearance caught the attention of dozens of onlookers.
It’s not uncommon for the transient Bigg’s orcas to venture into the confined harbour space. They make brief forays into the area several times a year, with sightings documented as far as past the Bay Street Bridge.
MacCutchan said that as she was leaving after the orcas departed, she noticed a harbour seal hiding in shallow water against the inner part of the concrete breakwater. “I think the little guy was very lucky,” she said.
Bigg’s sightings are increasingly common in the Salish Sea due to the abundance of seals and sea lions, according to the San Juan Island-based Orca Behavior Institute, which monitors the movements and health of the animals.
Data from March show Bigg’s orcas were in the Salish Sea for all 31 days of the month, with a record-setting 165 sightings of different orcas.