That is truly a look of concern. Photo: Screenshot//Facebook
Orcas are notoriously relentless hunters. The animals earned the nickname, Killer Whale, for the crafty, and incredibly varied, means by which they run down sharks, squid, seals and occasionally even boats. One group of Washington whale watchers got a glimpse of that pursuit first-hand, and became an inadvertent lifeline for a seal in the process.
On Sunday, November 2, Charvet Drucker, Smith Siromaskul and Terese DeBoer Drummond were boating in Saratoga Passage off Camano Island, Washington. The trio were observing a pod of at least eight killer whales, about 300-400 yards away from their 20-foot boat.
“When we got closer to the whales, we noticed that a hunt was occurring, because we saw behaviors such as tail lobs and porpoising,” Drucker told the Associated Press “We noticed that there was a seal in the photos and the other videos that we were taking and after about 30-40 minutes of them engaging in hunting or hunting practice with the seal, it had noticed our boat and made a beeline for us.”
From that point on, they went from observers to inadvertent participants in the seal’s desperate attempts to flee the orca pod.
“At that point, we shut the boat off completely to wait to see where they all decided to go,” explained Drucker in a Facebook post, along with photos and video of the encounter. “Well… the seal decided to jump onto the boat for safety. The orcas definitely tried to find it but gave up after about 15 minutes or so. Once the orcas left, we turned on the boat and slowly made our way closer to shore, with the seal aboard, to get it to a safer location. Once we got closer to shore, the seal decided it felt safe enough to leave the boat and jumped off on its own accord.”