Seal hides on dinghy to avoid falling prey to killer whales

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

And for one seal, it was life or death.

Michelle Wigmore and her husband were on the waters of Desolation Sound in British Columbia when a seal unexpectedly jumped onto their dinghy to avoid being eaten by the passing killer whales, also known as orcas.

“The orcas appeared and were circling for about 20 minutes searching for him,” Wigmore’s husband, Rob, told Global News. “They couldn’t find him because he was sitting up in our tender and he wasn’t budging. He just closed his eyes and went to sleep and would look at us every so often.”

The couple caught the seal hanging out on their dinghy on video while two whales circled nearby.

“Poor thing,” Wigmore is heard saying in the video.

“You feel sort of sorry for the seal, but you know that this is how these transient orcas survive,” she later told Global News.

At first, the seal used a nearby fishing boat to get out of the water but the boat took off and the seal fell out. So the seal then turned to the Wigmore’s dinghy to escape from the water.

Apparently, this type of behaviour is quite normal for seals as whales wait for them to get back into the water, biologist Robin Baird told Global News.

It was a close call for the little fella but eventually the whales did swim away.

“He was very very lucky,” Wigmore’s husband told Global News. “Coincidentally with the name of our boat is Plum Lucky so he was.”