Mother Nature is perfect is so many ways. And the rarest its beautiful creation are more fascinating become. It’s also the case of this extremely rare white humpback whale. Many of us doesn’t know those animals even exist. So imagine how lucky you must feel to see it with your eyes. That’s definitely once in a lifetime experience.
The huge mammalian also know as Migaloo might be the world’s best known animals. Since his first spot in 1991, he earned a legendary reputation.
Recently the rare animal was spotted again off Australian coast, near Sydney.
“What can I say? A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity seeing Migaloo the white whale swim past,” said Jonas Liebschner of Whale Watching Sydney who spotted Migaloo near the southern suburb of Cronulla. “He was travelling in a competition pod of five adults … and a great deal of zigging and zagging. There is an exclusion zone of 500 metres around him which we stuck to but with the nature of a competition pod it’s sometimes hard to predict where they will come up next. We got extremely lucky and had Migaloo come up just five metres next to our boat – what a sight that was!”
Named after the Aboriginal word for “white man,” Migaloo has gained notoriety as one of only a very few snowy whales known to humankind. Yet, so far it isn’t know exactly the reason of his unique color for a humpback whale. The experts think it might be either leucism or his true albino. That means he is unable to produce pigmentation at all. The animal is estimated to be 31-year-old. He can live up to 80 year-old according to Oskar Peterson, who runs the Australian-based White Whale Research Centre.
“He is the only white whale in the southern hemisphere that we know of,” said. ” We have seen evidence of another white whale in the Northern Arctic Zone off the coast of Norway, but that is it. So it is a very rare sight. Some years you see Migaloo but other years he goes missing in action.”
Because he’s on endangered species list, Migaloo has a restraining order against humans, of sorts. While Australian boaters can go within go within 100 meters of other whales (or 300 meters when a calf is involved), Migaloo has been granted a 500-meter buffer. There will be no indulging of grudges with this white whale.
h/t: scmp | treehugger
