Frosty, a three-year-old male orca with leucism, was spotted off the coast of California. Image: Screenshot//Instagram
A few years ago, back in 2019, researchers spotted something odd: a super-rare white orca. Since whales live in the ocean and we don’t, he made his mark, then disappeared back into the depths. But on April 24, the now-three-year-old showed up again. This time in California. Researchers named him Frosty, for obvious reasons.
Frosty has something called leucism, which causes a partial loss of pigmentation. Since orca whales are pretty famous for their pigmentation, Frosty is definitely an eye-catcher. He does have a few black spots on his dorsal fin and on his face, but for the most part, the young whale is almost entirely white.
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Frosty is part of a pod known as CA216, which consists of transient killer whales. Researchers have been tracking the pod as it travels North America’s west coast. The whales have been seen in northern Mexico to the south and as far as southern Canada in the north. Transient killer whales are so named because they tend to move around more than their counterparts, the aptly named resident killer whales, which like to hang around the same areas most of the time.
Frosty was spotted by Newport Coastal Adventure in late April, a little under 10 miles off the Malibu coast, near Newport Harbor.
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“On just a few hours notice, we loaded three boats for a special trip and drove 50 miles before we finally found the CA216 pod,” Newport Coastal Adventure wrote on Instagram. “One of the youngest members of this family is ‘Frosty,’ named for the unusually light skin as the result of a rare genetic condition.”
The lucky whale watchers were alerted to the pod by fishermen who were angling off San Clemente Island a week before the sighting, so they were hopeful that they’d run into the whales.
Leucism can have some harmful effects in some species, but Frosty appears to be doing just fine. Barring something like a ship-strike, researchers expect him to live a normal life.
