Norman Strickland said he “was really, really scared” when five or six orca whales surrounded and bumped his small boat off Canada’s eastern shore on Saturday.

The boat is 5.5 metres long and the whales, he estimates, were over four metres long.

At first, Norman Strickland thought he saw the fin of a blue shark, but as the whale surfaced he recognized it to be an orca. © Norman Strickland

Not playful, says fisherman

“They aren’t playful creatures I can tell you that, they are very, very frightening,” Strickland told the public broadcaster, CBC Radio.

The fisherman, his daughter and dog had left Burgeo, on the southern shore of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador at around 10:30. They travelled about half a nautical mile when they saw a dorsal fin just over four metres away.

The dorsal fin of an orca whale can stand up to 1.8 metres tall. © Norman Strickland

Boaters not likely mistaken for lunch

The whales surrounded the boat, preventing Strickland from changing the direction of the boat. “We were among those bloody things for probably 30 minutes and we probably travelled a mile and a half with them all around us,” he said.

Strickland was convinced the orcas thought the boat was an iceberg, and he and his daughter some tasty seals.

A view of the boat’s edge at the bottom left indicates just how close the whales got. © Norman Strickland

Jack Lawson, a government whale researcher doubts this. He told CBC that orcas are “pretty smart predators” with good vision. More to the point, he said the whales are extremely interested in boats and often act like dolphins, bobbing around the front and sides.

A rare event

Lawson said such an event is extremely rare. He added that he has examined more than 1,000 reports of whales off this coast and only four describe a person being struck or chased by an orca. And no one has ever been eaten by one.

As the boat edged back to shore, the whales moved off. © Norman Strickland

That said, he concedes that being surrounded and bumped in such a small boat would be scary and that Strickland did the right thing by moving towards shore as best he could. Then the animals moved off.

Strickland says anyone else travelling by boat, especially small boats like the kayaks that ply the waters nearby, should be very careful.