The little white whale has been spotted a few times over the last few days. Photo: Instagram//@The_Hiking_Biking_Viking//Screenshot
In Moby Dick, the epic novel by Herman Melville, Ishmael tells the story of Captain Ahab’s search for Moby Dick, the white sperm whale that took his leg. The term “white whale” has since become part of our lexicon, meaning something that is difficult to achieve but relentlessly pursued. Well, a real life white whale has been spotted a handful of times off Australia’s east coast, but it’s not a sperm whale. It’s a humpback whale calf.
It’s not entirely white, but just about. The little whale, thought to be leucistic — meaning it’s still got some pigment, unlike albino animals — has been spotted swimming beside its mother off the coast of Cabarita Beach and Minjerribah on Stradbroke Island.
There is one well-known leucistic humpback, a male named Migaloo, that very well could be the father, but it won’t be possible to tell unless researchers can genetically test the calf. It’s extraordinarily rare to spot a leucistic whale, in part because they’re so rare but also because whales don’t live on land and, well, we don’t see them all that much. So when whale watchers and whale fans in general heard about the little white whale, they flocked to the area in hopes of catching a look at it.
Migaloo, the famous white whale, could be the white calf’s father. Photo: Migaloo.com.au
“We saw that this calf was almost all white, so looking almost like a small iceberg floating by against the dark of the female whale,” said CSIRO scientist Dr. Eva Plaganyi, who joined the onlookers. “So, really exciting sighting and not something I’ve seen in my four decades of whale watching.”
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Dr Plaganyi knows how rare it is for a whale to have this particular DNA, so she thinks it’s conceivable that Migaloo is indeed the father. “In order to manifest or show this coloration, it is quite a rare genetic mutation … so it is possible Migaloo fathered this particular calf or there could be another reason for this genetic mutation,” Dr. Plaganyi said. “It can be an indicator of something happening in this environment, or it can be natural if you get the right combination of parents.”
Researchers believe the white whale calf was born sometime this year, so if all goes well, it’ll stay with its mother for the next year or so before making its own way in the world.
It’s likely that the calf and its mother will continue heading north, searching for the warmer waters off Queensland. Once there, citizen scientists are being encouraged to document it if they can.
“They are so highly visible that we can draw on citizen science to help us understand and answer questions about the whale,” Dr. Plaganyi said. “A distinctive whale like this means all along the coast people can spot the whale and log those observations.”
