I’ve heard of a coonskin cap, but this is ridiculous: A whale-watcher recently spotted an orca donning a dead salmon as a hat. What’s even more remarkable? The fashion statement appears to be the resurrection of a trend last seen in the orca community back in the ’80s.
The salmon hat trend goes back to 1987, when a female in the Puget Sound was spotted with a dead salmon on her nose. According to Atlas Obscura, the fad spread throughout the female’s pod and over the next six weeks the trend was spotted among individuals in all three pods in the area. But shortly thereafter, the trend stopped. Thirty seven years later, it appears it may be rearing its ugly—er, fishy—head again.
The stylish whale seen donning the salmon is J27 Blackberry, a member of the Puget Sound’s J pod. It was spotted with its fishy fashion statement on October 25. In an image snapped that day, the back end of the fish—on top of the mammal—is visible just above the water line. According to the Orca Conservancy, J27 Blackberry is a male born in 1991 that is “one of the most popular Southern Resident killer whales” and has a close relationship with his sister, J31, and younger brother, J39. The siblings lost their mother, J11, in 2008.
“It’s true that orcas have social trends, and that in the late 1980s this particular group of orcas was observed to engage in a short-lived trend of ‘wearing’ dead salmon on their heads,” said Stephanie Raymond, a program manager for the Orca Network, in an email to Gizmodo. “More recently, a single photo of an adult male orca with a salmon perched on his head has sparked a firestorm of memes and media attention about the retro trend returning.”
“If the salmon ‘wearing’ behavior exhibited by the whale known to local whale enthusiasts as J27 Blackberry was, in fact, a revival of the old trend, there would be ample documentation of that,” Raymond added.
According to the marine conservation group ORCA, humpback whales are occasionally spotted with seaweed on their heads—perhaps because it feels good. But humpback whales don’t eat kelp, and orcas do eat salmon. So the recent spotting—even though it was only observed in one individual—is more equivalent to a human wearing spaghetti and meatballs on their head than, say, dental floss.
These are heady days for an orca. Last year, the whales made headlines for attacking boats, and this year capsized a 49-foot yacht. This year, some of the apex predators were spotted hunting dolphins off the coast of Chile, one individual off South Africa ate a great white shark in two minutes, and another pod off Mexico learned to hunt whale sharks, the largest fish in the world.
Because the trend resurfaced (no pun intended) in the Puget Sound—same as before—it’s possible that some of the individuals who experienced the fad the first time are involved with its resurgence, as one researcher told New Scientist. However, J27 Blackberry was only born four years after the trend was last seen, so it’s unclear how the behavior may have been adopted by the 33-year-old cetacean.
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