Killer fashion: Is the orca ‘salmon hat’ back in vogue? – Oceanographic

Some things never go out of style. Others certainly do. Then there’s the pocket of culture that routinely makes its resurgence every generation. Children of the ‘80s will recognise the resurgence of retro right now: Arcade machines, synthesisers, salmon hats… the list goes on.

Yes, it may have taken some 37 years but if you weren’t aware: salmon hats are finally back in vogue. At least that is according to recent observations made of orcas within the Northwest Pacific.

For those that may not have received the memo, orcas have started wearing salmon hats again, bringing back – say researchers – a bizarre trend that was first recorded in the 1980s. 

Last month, scientists and whale watchers spotted orcas (Orcinus orca) in South Puget Sound and off Point No Point in Washington State swimming with dead fish on their heads, marking the first time they have been spotted sporting the bizarre headwear in almost 40 years.

It was in the summer of 1987 that the ‘salmon hat’ really took off, when a female orca – spotted wearing the accessory – kickstarted a trend that, within weeks, had spread beyond her pod to two others in what can only be reasonably likened to the ‘perm’ of the cetacean world. Unlike the perm, however, the trend failed to carry through a full season, and by the summer of 1988, the ‘salmon hat’ was a thing of the past.

But it did, however, leave observers with some rather significant learnings of orca behaviour – that the species is just as susceptible to a culture fad as we are.

And, just as fashion seemingly always comes back around within human culture, so too has the trend for salmon hats among orcas. But is it more likely that some orcas are just unwilling to let the 1980s go? As first reported in the New Scientist this month, researchers from the University of Oslo in Norway believe this may just be the case.

“It does seem possible that some individuals that experience [the behaviour] the first time around may have started it again,” said Andrew Foote, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Oslo in Norway, suggesting that orcas spotted wearing ‘salmon hats’ today may simply be veterans of the trend 40 years back.