Call me Ishmael. Australia’s own Moby Dick has been spotted again off the coast of New South Wales. Migaloo, the elusive white whale, showed his broad pale back to a group of whale watchers off the coast of New South Wales last week. In the last 18 years, Migaloo, which means “white fella” in the Mayi-Katuna language from north Queensland, has been spotted only four times. Because of his elusiveness, no one is sure exactly how old he is, but it is known that he is not the only documented all-white humpback in the world, as the video above states. That doesn’t mean it’s not exceedingly rare, though. According to Smithsonian.com, he is one of only three white whales in existence.
Although Migaloo is all white, it is doubtful that he is a real albino – his eyes aren’t red or pink. Like normal humpbacks, he has brown eyes. Instead, Migaloo is considered “hypo-pigmented,” which is a generic term for loss of skin color. It is also possible that he has something called leucism, a condition where all pigment is lost in different patches of cells. Last year, Ramon Navarro spotted and filmed what was incorrectly thought to be an albino southern right whale calf off the coast of Chile.
