Seal leaps into boat to avoid orcas

August 25, 2016 • 3:20 pm

Poor seal! It’s being stalked by nasty and hungry orcas, and these people let it stay in their boat till the murdering whales left. Here’s the YouTube notes:

We were out with the family looking for whales and a pod of 12 trainsiet killer whales where chasing the seal. It ripped towards the boat in a desperate escape and scrambled on the deck. It fell of three times in panic and finally stayed on untill the whales gave up after about 30-45 minutes. Most intense epic experience ever. Love you Nature. What a lucky seal.

Look at its scared face!

h/t: Heather

56 thoughts on “Seal leaps into boat to avoid orcas”

  1. They showed a bit of this on the news yesterday. And we sometimes think life is tough – we have no idea.

      1. Seals, Orcas and pubic lice (to spread the family arms a reasonable amount) and yeast are the results of at least one failed predation, leading to the endosymbiosis of the mitochondria.
        Brocolli, bless their little photosynthetic chloroplasts, have both mitochondria and chloroplasts as endosymbionts, meaning their line has had at least one more (failed) predation event in it’s history than ours.
        I’ll never walk past a field of brassicas without feeling their hungry minds questing back to their former predatory habits. [SHUDDER]
        I need an MP4 of a bowl of sprouts and the cello theme from ‘Jaws’.

    2. It’s because we live in a fallen world! Before original sin Orcas ate only grass!Lol!

      1. If orcas are of the same ‘baramin’ than cows, they could have not-evolved from them in less than 3000 years (after the Flood).

        Creationnists’ rates of transformations-without-any-evolution are very fast.

      2. True enough. I think the drama of this film illustrates beautifully the appeal of religion in relation to human suffering and angst. People not equipped with an ability to put the drama into a rational perspective leap faithfully to the conclusion that they are safe in the arms of Jesus.

      3. It brings to mind an innocent question raised long ago in my sunday school class. After the teacher read the Isaiah 6:11 passage about the wolf dwelling with the lamb, someone piped up and asked “And just what is that wolf going to eat for dinner?”

    3. Who invented this whole “eating each other” thing anyway?

      Your ancestor and mine, a long way back. See those mitochondria in every one of your cells – including the blood cells? Failed predation leading to endosymbiosis. If you accept Margulis’ theory anyway, and I’ve not head a more convincing explanation for these particular organelles (I’m less convinced over the Golgi bodies and ER).

  3. Very glad the terrified seal escaped. I do, however, object to the characterization of orcas as “nasty.” They are highly intelligent, efficient, animals and hunt co-operatively. If they were truly nasty, they could have knocked the boat over and eaten everyone, and everything, on it.

  4. Oh my, this is terrifying. My heart filled with anxiety for the seal. I worried the whales were going to bite his hind parts and pull him back into the water and into their mouths.

    That poor baby! I hope he’s still alive.

  5. Bully for the seal — but what about the pod’s juvenile Orcas that missed a meal?

    Re the video, as a fellow fisherman, all I can say is this: needs moar F-bombs.

    1. Orcas are badass and the baby was a bit on the pudgy side. I’m not saying I would have thrown in off, but…apex is apex for a reason. 🐬

      1. Yeah, seems to me that those who root unreservedly for the seal are engaging in an inverse “naturalistic fallacy” (or maybe it’s an inverse “is/ought” fallacy; I get those two confused).

    2. There is a version with the f-bombs bleeped out on YouTube – I chose to send Jerry the unadulterated version! 🙂

    3. Didn’t the people on the boat originally take the point of view of the Orcas? I thought I heard “Sorry, guys” and a quick discussion about knocking the seal back in.

      It was only when the seal began to seem like something which needed their protection that the perspective flipped the other way.

  6. That seal had no desire to become orca kibble. Hooray seal, live long and prosper!

  7. This was just off Vancouver island the other day.Good for the seal. I’m told events like this are not infrequent.

  9. I’m originally from BC and heard from salmon anglers in Georgia Strait, where this took place, of similar occurrences where harbour seals sought shelter from orcas by jumping on boats. One of the cool things is that there are two populations of orcas: transients, that feed on marine mammals; and residents that feed on fish. The seals know the difference, and recognize them by their calls. They ignore the calls of the resident whales, but if they hear transients, they can’t get out of the water fast enough, including sometimes on to boats.

    1. Wow! Very interesting. I wondered why they were pointing out that the orcas were transients in their comments.

    2. To misquote someone who I forget at this time, “The prospect of being predated in the morning concentrates the mind wonderfully.”
      And I too don’t particularly like the anthropomorphism of the paedomorphic seal puppy and it’s “nasty” orca predators. It’s predation no less than a meerkat (“Ahhh”) de-stinging a scorpion and giving it to the kittens (“Awwwww-ahhhh!!”) to tear limb from limb from limb from limb from limb from limb from limb from limb (did I get the limb count right?).
      Shallow-fried ovum of theropod dinosaur for breakfast?

      1. “Depend upon it sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”–Samuel Johnson

    1. Yes! Why does no-one ever think to at least turn it on its side? I know nothing about photography, but I think I could manage that at least!

      1. I suspect that people either don’t think about it or forget (particularly when there’s something exciting going on). Phone cameras should come with a little flashing icon to remind you when you’re filming vertically.

  11. I can sympathise with the seal while noting that a penguin might feel quite differently about it.

    G*d was really being a bastard when he invented carnivores, wasn’t he?

    cr

  13. “Seal leaps into boat …”

    Hey, Heidi Klum says “jump,” Seal says “how high?” Can’t blame him, can ya?

    … Oh, wait, they’re not a couple anymore, are they?

  14. Nature selecting for seals willing to jump onto a boat and against whales unwilling to jump onto a boat?

      1. … selecting against boat-skippers foolish enough to take small craft into waters inhabited by killer whales …

  16. I’m somehow reminded of the kids next door who lose their balls and Frisbees on my side of the retaining wall and then want me to throw them back..

  17. I am tired of all this bullying of orcas. We have this boat giving a safe space to some stupid seal. This is after finding out that even more stupid humpback whales go around and bully orcas around the world.

  18. So, what I kept thinking the whole time was:

    1. Dude who keeps going close to the seal: Move away and let it be!

    2. How effing lucky they were to have orcas that close for that long! Wow!

  20. Humans, at the end of the film: “Yay! Way to go, seal! You made it, buddy! Hooray!”

    Seal: “S-s-s-o hungry. So tired. Mom? Did y-you make it? Sis?? Where are you???”

    1. Sorry, that was Greg. How about this instead? “There’s nothing like the flavor of a good steak made from dry-aged beef, and life is short.”

      (But I’m just kidding, of course, and you probably were too.)

  22. Maybe it is just my curmudgeonliness, but I couldn’t help but feel that if the people had any sense of nature, the man would have kept of the swim platform of the boat while the seal was trying to hide from the Orcas. Instead the seal “falls off” the boat multiple times, really probably just trying to figure out which threat is greater during the ordeal.

    1. My feeling too. I would have stayed at the front of the boat and let the poor seal alone.

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