AILSA CHANG, HOST:
All right, the hottest fashion trend of the season might be salmon hats. Yes, you heard that right. Hats made of salmon, not worn by humans, but by orcas - an orca off the coast of Washington State was spotted with a dead salmon on its head. And while scientists are not sure exactly why they're exhibiting this behavior, they do know that it has happened before. And for more, we have called Deborah Giles. She's the science and research director at the Washington-based nonprofit Wild Orca. Giles heads the research team that observed this phenomenon last month. Welcome, welcome.
DEBORAH GILES: Hi, thanks for having me.
CHANG: Thanks for being with us. OK, wait, so when you first spotted this behavior, just, like, tell us the story of what happened and what you thought (laughter)?
GILES: Yeah. So our work entails utilizing a scent detection dog, a trained scent detection dog who stands on the front of our boat and helps us locate floating killer whale feces. And we were on a scent. Eba was on a scent. She was actively engaged in pointing us in the direction of a scat sample. And I was driving the boat. And I just happened to look over my right shoulder, and there was a whale not too far away that had its head up above water with a salmon draped over it. And...
CHANG: (Laughter).
GILES: ...Yeah, it was pretty great. I had seen this before, way back in the late '80s...
CHANG: OK.
GILES: ...From land. But I hadn't seen it for quite a number of years on the water.
CHANG: OK, wait. I have so many questions. Like, my first question is how is the salmon attached to the top of the orca's head? Like, how does it stay on when the orca is swimming around the ocean?
GILES: Well, they're not really going underwater, that we know of, with the salmon.
CHANG: OK.
GILES: Or if they do, it kind of falls off, and then they might pick it back up.
CHANG: Oh.
GILES: But they do use...
CHANG: So the salmon is just perched. It's just balanced.
GILES: It's perched.
CHANG: OK.
GILES: Generally, when they're seen, the whales are almost vertical in the water with their heads up above the water, and the salmon is just kind of perched there.
CHANG: (Laughter) This is so strange and cool. And you mentioned that you've seen this behavior decades ago. So this is kind of like a recurring fashion trend, I guess, right? Why do you think that this kind of behavior is recurring? What's going on here?
GILES: So these are whales - this is a very small population of whales. They're an insular population. They are listed as an endangered subpopulation or a distinct population segment. And what they were eating down there in South Sound when I saw them last month is this large abundance of chum salmon that are here this year. And so we're hypothesizing that this behavior may occur - we may never know the answer to this - but it may occur when the whales are getting enough to eat and they have an opportunity to kind of play with their food.
CHANG: Oh.
GILES: So it's possible that they're, right at that moment, well fed enough...
CHANG: Yeah.
GILES: ...To kind of hang on to the next meal, or maybe they're waiting for a friend to come and share that meal with.
CHANG: That's so sweet. I love that. So what are you going to be watching for on this front? As this phenomenon is unfolding yet again, what will you be looking closely at?
GILES: You know, what I'm hoping that this media is doing is really pointing to the desperate need to make sure that these whales have enough to eat throughout their entire range, throughout the entire year, every day of the year. And if we start seeing more salmon hats being worn, it very well may mean that they have that food that they need.
CHANG: That makes me want to see a whole lot more orcas out there wearing salmon hats.
GILES: Me too.
CHANG: Deborah Giles - she's a killer whale researcher with Wild Orca and resident scientist at the University of Washington. Thank you so much.
GILES: Thank you so much.
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