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TOFINO KILLER WHALES, SURFERS VIDEO GOES VIRAL
By Jordana Divon, Yahoo! News Canada:
What makes for the perfect surfing experience? Is it a steady supply of clean waves? Watching the sun peek out from behind the mountains after a beautiful barrel ride? How about getting caught in an epic chase between a pod of transient killer whales and their sea lion prey?
That last scenario happened to describe the morning of a dozen lucky surfers near the Tofino, B.C. coast last Friday – lucky because most were smart enough to hightail it of the way before they became accidental Jonahs and also because it’s not everyone who gets a chance to witness nature at its most spectacular.
Video footage captured by Adam Chilton, a local videographer upon whom fortune was smiling down that day, shows the orcas surfacing around 150 metres from the shore in pursuit of a group of sea lions.
Also in the video: a group of surfers paddling to shore once they caught a glimpse of the scene unfolding behind them.
“It was a pleasant surprise, for sure,” Chilton told the Toronto Star.
“It’s no shock to see them… However, seeing them this close to surfers is something very rare and only seen a handful of times by locals in the past 50 years.”
People seem to agree. Since he posted it to YouTube on Tuesday, Chilton’s video has been viewed nearly 150,000 times.
