DOC staff were completing the last week of their annual four-week Cook Strait Whale Survey when they spotted the white whale with a normal black-coloured humpback.
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Migaloo the albino whale was seen happily splashing off the coastline of Wellington, New Zealand on Sunday as whale researchers were treated to a show by the majestic animal.
“They didn’t think the whale was going to lift its tail [for an identification snapshot], so the boat pulled up parallel to it and they realised it was a white whale”, Mrs Bott said.
A rare white humpback whale spotted in Cook Strait yesterday by Department of Conservation researchers is thought to be “Migaloo”, a white humpback usually seen off Australia. “I have never seen anything like this in New Zealand”, Carlos Olavarria, a marine mammal scientist who was on the boat, told the New Zealand Department of Conservation.
Despite their rarity, Bott explains that every whale also has specific identifiers and this particular white whale has disitnctive features like those on Migaloo, which strongly indicates it is the same whale. This year there were 122, including the rare white whale. “We realised it was adult size, and there’s only four in the world”. Scientists also believe Migaloo has fathered two white calves, which appear along Australia’s eastern coast.
The biologists will compare DNA taken yesterday from the white whale via a biopsy dart, with Migaloo’s DNA.
Of those, one is Migaloo and another is a whale spotted off Norway this year. One has been named MJ, short for Migaloo junior.
New Zealand has been assessing the recovery of the humpback whale population since commercial whaling ended in 1964. Previously the highest was 106 humpbacks in 2012.
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Nadine Bott said this was a promising indication humpback whale numbers are increasing in our waters.
