Southern Resident orcas have been seen wearing salmon ‘hats.’ But it's not all fun and games

There have been a few sightings recently of Southern Resident orcas carrying dead salmon on their foreheads, kind of like a hat. That surprised some people, but it’s not entirely new behavior. The Residents have been seen doing that since at least back in the 1980s.

Deborah Giles is the science and research director at Wild Orca, a Friday Harbor-based nonprofit, and a resident scientist of the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Labs. She told KUOW’s Kim Malcolm that while this "salmon hat" phenomenon is certainly noteworthy, and may be unique to the J, K, and L pods, it's likely not a hopeful sign of long-term recovery.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Kim Malcolm: For folks who have not seen the photos about this, can you describe what the resident orcas have been doing?

Deborah Giles: What it looks like is exactly what it sounds like. They'll be with their heads kind of sticking up above the water. They can hover there for a fair amount of time. Since 2005 when I first started studying these whales, I've seen it four or five times, not including the one that I saw in November. It's not like a proper spy hop, where they come up out of the water and then go back down. It's more just kind of logging with their head out of the water, and then they've got a fish draped across the top of it.

Do you have a sense of why they do this?

I've been asked that question quite a bit lately, and the honest answer is that we don't really know why they do this. We do know that they've got very sensitive skin, so it might just feel interesting. The times that I've seen it have been times when they have been foraging a lot and foraging successfully. So, it's quite possible that this was just a whale that had enough to eat, had a full belly, had caught and killed another fish, and just wasn't ready to ingest it yet.

You know, these animals cooperatively hunt. They share food. So it might have just been as simple as there wasn't anybody to share the meal with, and they didn't want to partake in it at that moment.

And there have been very high numbers of Chum salmon around here. Do you think that's linked at all to this behavior?

It's quite possible. It's a very, very large number compared to recent previous years of Chum down in South Sound, and it's why we're seeing the Southern Residents. We had a proper super pod, meaning all members of the Southern Resident clan. J's, K's, and L's were present on November 1. And then we've had different periods of time since October 19 with a full pod down there for days and days on end. That's rare since the studies began.

If there's enough food out there and they can forage and get enough to eat, then there's more time for play and social behavior. It's kind of like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. If their immediate needs of nourishment are met, then there's more time for leisure, play time.

You saw an orca come to the surface with the salmon draped over its head. What did you think when you saw that?

It was kind of fun. I just glanced over my right shoulder to almost the back of the boat, and there was a whale hovering at the surface of the water with a fish on his head. I don't even know if it was a male or female that I saw, because the dorsal fin and saddle patch were underwater. The Southern Residents are very tactile, very interested in things in their environment. I've seen J2, Granny, barrel roll up the west side of San Juan Island through kelp beds. I have never heard of another population of whales that is has engaged with putting fish on their head.

You and other scientists have been warning us for some time about the risk that the Southern Residents are facing when it comes to their food sources. This seems to be a bit of a bright spot amid all of that. I'm wondering what you and your colleagues will be looking for next as you study these populations.

Well, it could be a bright spot. You know, it's like when the babies are born. When there's a newborn baby, we are cautiously and hopefully optimistic that that baby's going to make it. But the fact of the matter is a huge percentage of these females, almost 70% who are getting pregnant in this population, cannot bring their calves to term. They're miscarrying their calves, or the babies are born and die right away. The last calf born, J60, in January of this year, died right away. So, for a population of whales that we’re ostensibly trying to recover, we're just not doing enough to make sure that they have enough to eat every day.

So, when they're engaging in these seemingly heartwarming behaviors, or when they give birth to a beautiful, you know, there's really nothing cuter than a newborn killer whale calf, in my opinion, we get really excited, and rightly so, but the facts kind of play out pretty quickly that it's not the best situation. The whales are not on a recovery trajectory, and that's what we need to be focusing on.

For me, it's always looking at how do we help change fisheries management in order to make sure that the whales have the fish coming all the way back home. A way to do that is really to transition to terminal fishery, or local fishing, fishing at or near the rivers of origin. That's something that more and more people are starting to think about and talk about, getting out of the ocean, getting away from mixed stock fisheries and back to a more ancient way of fishing, just to ensure that there's enough fish out there that the whales can intercept in their own home range down here in Washington and Oregon and off Vancouver Island.

Going back to that Maslow's hierarchy of needs, killer whales are like you and me, where they need to eat every day in order to maintain optimal health. They're not like gray whales or humpback whales that have evolved over time to go through long periods of fasting. The Southern Residents need to eat every day. And so, this is just a reminder to us, a kind of a very visual reminder, that if it is the case that they're kind of playing with their food — or, as Michael Weiss from the Center for Whale Research said yesterday, I love his phrase, he says, “Yeah, they're just packing a lunch. They're gonna eat it later.” If that is the case, that they have enough food in their immediate vicinity that they're not hungry and not constantly foraging like we see them so much now doing, that's just another reminder that we need to do better about making sure these whales have food throughout their entire range, throughout the entire year.

Listen to the interview by clicking the play button above.