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A free scan shows the junk files, broken settings and background clutter dragging Windows down - then fixes them in one click.Free scan · Windows 10 & 11A photograph taken by wildlife photographer Jim Pasola on October 25, 2024, shows J27 Blackberry, a Southern Resident killer whale, swimming near Point No Point in Washington’s Puget Sound with a fish balanced on his head. Another similar sighting was reported in November. The images revived memories of a striking 1987 episode—but they do not yet prove that the behavior has returned as a widespread fad.
What happened in the 2024 sightings?
Pasola’s photograph captured J27 Blackberry carrying a shiny, silver fish on his head. The fish’s species and whether it was alive are not fully established in the accessible photo coverage, so “fish” is the careful description. In November, biologist Deborah Giles separately reported seeing an unidentified orca perform similar behavior. These are distinct observations; the photograph itself shows Blackberry, not several whales wearing fish.
Why do people call it a “salmon hat”?
The nickname refers to orcas balancing fish—often described as salmon—on their heads. The best-known episode began in 1987, when a female in K-Pod was reported carrying salmon and the behavior appeared to spread to J-Pod and L-Pod over the following weeks or months. It became uncommon in public reports afterward, although similar sightings were described sporadically in later years. So “not seen since the 1980s” is too absolute if taken literally; the 2024 reports renewed attention to behavior that had seemed to fade as a visible fad.
Why are orcas carrying fish on their heads?
No one knows. Saving food for later, sharing it, playing, and learning socially are possibilities raised by observers, not established explanations. As Giles put it to National Geographic in December 2024: “It’s all speculation,” Giles says. “We don’t know.”
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Orcas are capable of social learning, which makes it plausible that a behavior could spread among individuals. But that general capacity does not establish what motivated these particular whales or whether they were copying one another. Giles also cautioned that the behavior may have existed long before people noticed it: “it’s quite possible that this has been part of their behavioral repertoire that they’ve been doing since time immemorial, and it was just noticed by humans in the ‘80s.”
Have orcas brought back the salmon-hat trend?
The reports are intriguing, but a few observations cannot show that the behavior has become common across the population again. The 1987 episode was reported across multiple Southern Resident pods; the 2024 coverage documents a photograph of Blackberry and a separate November sighting, not a comparable spread.
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Experts have also urged caution about the label. Monika Wieland Shields, director of the Orca Behavior Institute, told National Geographic: “In my opinion it’s a stretch to say it was a salmon hat, and an even greater stretch to say the fad is back off a single photo,” she says. Other reporting describes more than one recent observation, but that still does not establish a population-wide trend. The most accurate conclusion is that fish-carrying was reported again in 2024; whether it marks a renewed fad remains unknown.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the sightings mean for Southern Resident orcas
Southern Residents are a fish-eating ecotype whose diet consists mainly of salmon. NOAA Fisheries listed the population as endangered in 2005, and its July 2025 census counted 74 whales. NOAA identifies prey scarcity, contaminants, and vessel noise or disturbance among the pressures affecting them. A playful-looking photograph of a fish on a whale’s head does not establish that the whales are well-fed or that the population is recovering. See NOAA Fisheries’ Southern Resident killer whale information for its population and conservation context.
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