On game night, it\u2019s easy to pick a side to cheer for. When the stakes are life or death \u2013 and both sides are icons of Greater Victoria\u2019s waters \u2013 choosing who to champion is not so easy.<\/p>\n
That was the decision facing Sooke resident Kevin Morgan when he got a front row seat to a spectacular display of the beauty and brutality of the natural world.<\/p>\n
After finishing work Aug. 31 near the Institute of Ocean Sciences in Patricia Bay, Morgan and his colleagues watched as a pod of orcas hunted a buffet of harbour seals hauled out on a floating log breakwater.<\/p>\n
Morgan says there were up to eight orcas working together as a team to spook the seals into the water.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn lots of occasions, it looked like they were bumping into the logs and\/or creating waves,\u201d he said. \u201cAnything just to disrupt the logs to get the seals off and into the water, where they could have better access to them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Morgan estimates up to eight seals fell victim to the killer whales\u2019 tactics, with one of the kills captured on video. After what appears to be a quick chase through the water, one whale appears at the surface, holding a seal in its mouth.<\/p>\n
The spectacle left him with mixed emotions, ranging from sadness to excitement as he watched the hunt unfold.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou see the seals jump in, and you\u2019re saying, \u2018No, no,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cBut at the same time, you\u2019re kind of wanting the orcas to get them \u2013 they have to eat just as much as the seals, and if that\u2019s their food source, then we want to make sure that the orcas are surviving as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Living on Vancouver Island, Morgan has seen orcas up close before, but never a display quite like this.<\/p>\n
\u201cOverall, it\u2019s just incredible to see \u2013 pretty surreal, but hard to look away,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Erin Gless, executive director for the Pacific Whale Watch Association, said hunts like the one Morgan caught on camera are happening all the time along B.C.\u2019s coast.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s just very rarely a person there at the ready with a camera to capture it,\u201d she said. \u201cRight place, right time for sure \u2013 I\u2019m very jealous, that\u2019s a really cool encounter.\u201d<\/p>\n
Watching the video, Gless says after catching the seal, the whale swims off to share its prey with its pod.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s gonna share it with her entire family,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of gruesome, but they\u2019ll all rip it apart and take pieces, and so they eat together.\u201d<\/p>\n
The predatory behaviour observed in the video is typical of Bigg\u2019s killer whales, says Gless, who notes they will often create waves to knock their prey off docks, rocks and floating ice floes in Antarctica.<\/p>\n
Like Morgan, Gless finds it difficult to watch the seals fall prey to the whales.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s just the natural instinct of the seals to kind of startle, but unfortunately, they startle into the water, which is the worst place to be,\u201d she said. \u201cThe smart ones are the ones that are staying on the logs.<\/p>\n
\u201cOrcas definitely need to eat, but it\u2019s hard for me to see sometimes. I\u2019m kind of a bleeding heart gal myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
The pod of Bigg\u2019s killer whales showing off their hunting prowess is the T109As, relatives of Brave Little Hunter, the orphan orca calf who caught the world\u2019s attention in 2024, when, after a month stranded inside a Vancouver Island tidal lagoon, she made a bid for freedom.<\/p>\n
Since her escape, there have been no confirmed sightings of the calf for around two years, with many experts assuming she has not survived.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut you know, we\u2019ve been surprised before,\u201d said Gless. \u201cWe\u2019ve had whales show up five years later that we had assumed could have passed away, and they were just off, you know, doing their own thing. So you never know.\u201d<\/p>\n
While hope remains for Brave Little Hunter, Gless says this summer has brought its fair share of orca sightings close to shore around Vancouver Island and Washington state.<\/p>\n
Just days after Morgan\u2019s encounter, a pod visited Victoria\u2019s Inner Harbour not once, but twice in one day.<\/p>\n
Gless suspects the increase in sightings could be linked to \u201charbour seal pup season.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo maybe they\u2019re checking all of these little marinas and inlets to try to take advantage of some easy meals, but yeah, if you\u2019re a shore-based person, keep your eyes out because these whales are popping up in unexpected places.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On game night, it\u2019s easy to pick a side to cheer for. When the stakes are life or…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":890025,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":["post-890024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=890024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890024\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/890025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=890024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=890024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=890024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}