PACIFIC NORTHWEST/SALISH SEA
Speculation abounds regarding a photo taken by Jim Pasola on Oct. 25, 2024, which shows an orca known as J27, or Blackberry, wearing a dead salmon on his head, rather stylishly. Deborah Giles, a longtime biologist at the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Laboratories, noted that a similar “salmon hat craze” spread to the three pods that comprise the southern resident orcas of Washington’s Salish Sea. “It seemed to kind of pass along to multiple different members of the population,” Giles told National Geographic, and then, like so many fashions, it faded away, until J27 resurrected it. One explanation for the jaunty headgear, aside from the orca’s natural desire to make the next best-dressed water-mammal list, involves the Salish Sea’s unusually high chum salmon population. When food…
