Orcas delight onlookers at Vancouver’s Locarno Beach

Visitors to Vancouver's Locarno Beach were treated to a rare sight Friday as a group of orcas swam near shore.

Ali Sherazee only moved to Vancouver three months ago, but on Friday he caught a sight some lifelong residents haven’t been lucky enough to see.

Sherazee was at Locarno Beach with his wife and brother in law around noon and was wading in the surf when he thought he caught sight of a seal swimming about 30 metres away.

Then he caught sight of some much bigger marine mammals — a group of orcas.

“I felt like maybe 100-150 feet (away) I saw their tails,” he told Global News.

“I booked it out the water, it’s low tide right now, so I ran across a lot of wet sand to my wife and brother in law who were set up at the beach and grabbed my phone and my brother in law and I ran back to the water.”

Sherazee was able to capture a quick clip of the orcas before they dove back beneath the waves, and said he believes they were hunting seals.

If that’s the case, the killer whales were likely transient or Bigg’s orcas, known for their appetite for seals and other pinnipeds, rather than the endangered southern resident orcas which prefer to feast on salmon.