It's like "Moby Dick" in real life. A rare white humpback whale has been sighted off the coast of Norway.
British maritime engineer Dan Fisher, 32, spotted the humpback whale while on a boat trip to Svalbard, Norway, and snapped photos from the ship's mast. The pictures were later published in The Daily Mail.
The short video above shows the white whale in the company of its pigmented peers. The whale surfaces, blows a spout and then dives under the water again.
The whale is thought to have leucism, a genetic condition that reduces all skin pigments in animals. This is distinct from albinism, which affects levels of the pigment melanin.
Although sightings are rare, this is not the only white humpback whale known to exist.
Migaloo, whose name is an Aboriginal Australian word meaning "white fella," is an all-white humpback whale that migrates along the eastern coast of Australia.
Before Migaloo was spotted in 1991, no other all-white humpbacks had been reported. However, others have been spotted since.
In 2011, a white humpback whale calf was sighted near the Great Barrier Reef in northern Queensland. Some speculated that Migaloo and the white calf might be related, but this cannot be proven without a DNA test, News 24 reports.
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