A white whale approached a boat at sea, and it wasn’t Moby Dick.
A boat full of tourists witnessed what may have been the first-ever sighting of an all-white Omura’s Whale off the coast of Thailand in a rare New Year’s Day gift, according to the Miami Herald.
Passengers onboard the “Happy Ours” charter boat in the Andaman Sea witnessed the once-in-a-lifetime glimpse of an all-white Omura’s Whale swimming alongside another whale, this one in it’s typical dark gray color, also a rare sight.
The “albino whale” was seen swimming just below the surface of the water in the Andaman Sea and feet away from the “Happy Ours” charter boat.
Those on board shouted in glee at the aquatic phenomenon below them, according to the video posted to Facebook.
The “mysterious” creature then swam away from the boat before breaching the water, while showing off for its crowd.
The video’s poster, ThaiWhales, an Environmental Conservation Organization based in Bangkok, Thailand, researched the whale after it received the clip from the original videographer who was on board the charter boat.
The whale was spotted approximately 5.6 miles south of Coral Island, a part of the Phuket Province.
The group determined it was an Omura’s whale, after studying “the single central ridge on the head, fin shape, balance, posture.”
The Omura’s whale, or Balaenoptera omurai, is a species of baleen whale and is named after Japanese cetologist Hideo Omura.
The sighting was the first known sighting of an all-white Omura’s whale off the coast of Thailand and possibly in the world.
The rare whale was first “discovered” in 2003 after researchers used several corpses found in the 1970s and analyzed the morphology and mitochondrial DNA of the remains, according to the research journal, Nature.
The first living Omura’s whale was recognized in the wild in 2015.
They have been spotted in all ocean basins around the world except in the central and eastern Pacific, according to the Whale and Dolphin Conservation, but the only known genetically confirmed population of living whales is located off the coast of Madagascar.
Experts at the WDC believe in the coming years, the whale will be spotted in new locations that would “demonstrate that they live in tropical and warm-temperate seas all over the world.”
The whale’s unique long, thin and super-streamlined figure give off a “distinctive snake-like appearance” while swimming in the water.
Typically the Omura’s whale is counter-shaded, with a dark grey color on its back, while its belly gives off a whitish tint, but because the one seen off the coast of Phuket was albino, which was mostly white.
Over the years, several albino whales gained fame for different reasons.
The most famous of them, is the fictional sperm whale, Moby DIck, from Herman Melville’s novel of the same name.
Although the real-life whale the fictional one is based on had patches of gray and white and not a true albino, according to the International Marine Mammal Project.
Migaloo, an albino humpback, was seen off the coast of Australia several years ago after first being spotted in 1991.
