‘It was very cool to watch’: Orca sighting in Vancouver harbour the perfect birthday gift for B.C. woman

A North Vancouver resident got a birthday surprise she’ll never forget—a visit from a pod of orcas on Burrard Inlet.

Lauren Zylyk has celebrated half a dozen birthdays since moving to North Vancouver, but she’s never received a present like the one she got Saturday morning.

“I was like, ‘Oh, the whales came out for my birthday,’” she told CTV News with a laugh, recalling the delight of spying orcas in the Burrard Inlet for the first time.

Video Zylyk recorded shows a group of the cetaceans, also known as killer whales, surfacing in the heavily trafficked waterway.

In one shot, the animals are seen frolicking in the water in front of the iconic sails of Vancouver’s Canada Place. In another, their antics disappear behind a passing SeaBus.

She said the whales stayed in the same general area of the harbour for more than 40 minutes.

“They were kind of just, like, playing around,” she said. “It was very cool to watch.”

Zylyk said she saw a post about the orca sightings in a local Facebook group around 8:15 a.m. and decided to walk down to the shore to see if they were still there.

She ended up watching the animals, with her husband and dog, from 8:30 a.m. until 9 a.m., saying the experience left her thankful to live in this part of the world.

B.C.’s southern resident killer whales, which eat only fish, are endangered. There are fewer than 80 living in the wild, in three matriarchal pods: J, K and L.

Transient orcas, also known as Bigg’s killer whales, are more common, and eat almost exclusively marine mammals. This is the type more likely to be spotted in Metro Vancouver.