There's something fishy about a recent sighting of an orca in a salmon 'hat'
CTV
In 1987, a group of killer whales briefly donned salmon "hats," carrying dead fish on their heads. The trend may have returned, according to a recent photo.
Fashion is fickle and styles come and go — even for orcas, apparently.
In 1987, a group of killer whales off the northwestern coast of North America briefly donned salmon "hats," carrying dead fish on their heads for weeks. Recently, a male orca known as J27, or "Blackberry," was photographed in Washington’s Puget Sound wearing a salmon on his head, and many observers declared that the trend had returned.
But while the sight of the salmon-wearing orca sparked excitement, "there have been no further recent images of these orcas wearing salmon hats," said Stephanie Raymond, a program manager of the Orca Network, a nonprofit that promotes awareness and conservation of orcas and other marine mammals of the Pacific Northwest.
These killer whales visit Puget Sound annually, and when they do, "there is no shortage of eyes on the water and cameras capturing their visit, in addition to permitted research vessels carefully observing them," Raymond told CNN in an email. If the so-called trend of wearing salmon hats was making a comeback among these orcas, “there would be ample documentation of that,” she said.
Photographer Jim Pasola captured the image of J27 and his fish headgear on Oct. 25 from Point No Point, a site on the tip of a peninsula in the Puget Sound. On Oct. 29, the Orca Network shared the photo in its Whale Sighting Report email. A subcommunity of the orcas, known as J Pod, were hunting salmon in Puget Sound, and J27 swam at the surface with a salmon draped over the top of his head.
"I saw it in our email summary of the reports of that week," said Howard Garrett, a former orca researcher and Orca Network’s cofounder and board president. "It was a highlighted photograph, a lucky shot."
About ten days later, another salmon-wearing orca briefly surfaced near scientists who were gathering data in Puget Sound, said Dr. Deborah Giles, one of the researchers on the boat and the science and research director for the conservation group Wild Orca.
