A harbor seal that seemingly was being used as hunting practice escaped a pod of orcas and sought refuge on a small boat where photographers were watching the whales off an island in Washington state earlier this month.

The episode was captured in photographs and phone video by Camano Island resident Charvet Drucker, an amateur wildlife photographer, who with friends rents a small boat a handful of times a year to photograph whales in Washington's Salish Sea.

That day, though, the spotlight was taken by a clever seal. Charvet and her friends had seen alerts that whales were near their homes and decided to track them on the rented boat. They finally found them on a stretch between two islands called Saratoga Passage. Using telephoto lenses they were able to see that the whales had juvenile and a seal among them.

"After about 30 to 40 minutes of them engaging in hunting or hunting practice with the seal, it had noticed our boat and made a beeline for us," Charvet said.

The orcas were right behind it.

At that point, the group put down their cameras, took out their phones and turned off their boat engine in line with regulations. The seal popped up behind the boat and hoisted itself on to the platform by the engine.

The orcas circled the boat, swam underneath it and in one instance, Charvet said, lined up to create a wake to knock the seal off the boat. Luckily the pinniped was able to get back on.

"We've been asked a lot if we were scared of the orcas and no, the answer's no," she said.

Charvet said the orcas gave up after 15 or 20 minutes. Once they were out of sight, the friends turned the engine back on and slowly made their way back with the seal still on board.

A few hundred yards from shore, the seal jumped off to live another day.

"I'm definitely Team Orca all day, every day. But once that seal was on the boat, I kind of turned Team Seal just because, I mean, you have to when it's on your boat," she said.