Beach-goers in Nanaimo got to share the waters of Departure Bay with a pod of orcas recently.
Area resident Lori Jones said the orcas spent more than 90 minutes in the bay, feeding on a seal. More and more people gathered at the beach to watch, and by the end, hundreds were watching the Bigg’s killer whales “put on quite a show.”
“It was like a festival atmosphere by the end and I thought, ‘That’s really cool,’” Jones says.
“The bay was so crowded … people were swimming, kayaking. It was really busy, but generally people were pretty good about trying to stay away from them,” she says, adding that orcas come into the bay “more often than you’d think,” but generally cruise in and cruise out without attracting the kind of attention they did this time.
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