01-04-2025
Narwhal prank fools Seattle on April Fools' Day
The joke was on us Tuesday morning when an Instagram post claimed a narwhal had been spotted in local waters for the first time in over a century.
The intrigue: The post by the Natural Resources Defense Council claimed the appearance of the marine animal was a promising sign that the whale with a long, spiral tusk could make a comeback in Puget Sound.
Reality check: Then we remembered what day it was.
NOAA's Brad Hanson of NOAA confirmed it was a "great April Fools joke."
"Narwhals have never been documented in Puget Sound," Erin Gless of the Pacific Whale Watch Association told Axios.
They're typically found thousands of miles away in the Arctic Ocean near northern Canada, Greenland, and the European Arctic, per Gless, though there have been rare sightings near Alaska.
