White Sperm Whale ‘Moby Dick’ Spotted by Sailors Off the Coast of Jamaica

A footage of white sperm whale spotted off the coast of Jamaica brings to life Herman Melville's classic Moby Dick.

The most mythic animal in the ocean was filmed on Monday by a Dutch merchant sailor, Leo van Toly, which seemed totally relaxed as it moved gracefully against the blue waters of the Caribbean. The "outrageously pale" pelagic mammal would definitely attract Moby-Dick fans as the vision of the CGI animation seems to have come to life.

"I don't think I've ever seen a fully white sperm whale. I have seen ones with quite a lot of white on them, usually in patches on and near the belly," Hal Whitehead, an expert on the species, told the Guardian.

However, although the white animal looked unmistakably wonderful, its whiteness is not what one might think.

Albino Sperm Whales

Sperm whales are generally grey, black or even brown in appearance, but just like other albino animals, many sperm whales can have patches of white on their back, head, stomach or flanks. However, an all-white whale is not necessarily an albino.

Their whiteness is commonly the result of either albinism or leucism - conditions that affect the whales' ability to produce the pigment melanin responsible for their normal gray color.

The irregular distribution of melanin pigments in the skin also affects many other animals, like tigers, lions, and horses.

Even on the scale of the world's oceans, white whales are relatively gigantic in nature, and meeting one across is so rare that scientists often see only a few individuals occasionally during their lifetimes. The last one recorded this century was photographed off Sardinia in 2015, an individual that had not been seen for nine years before that.

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The Story of Migaloo

"Migaloo", first sighted off Byron Bay, Australia in 1991, is considered to be the most famous humpback whale in the world and the only pure white one alive today. Genetic testing in 2004 by Southern Cross University scientists confirmed that Migaloo is a true male albino.

In Melville's book, the fictional white whale bit off Captain Ahab's leg and sent the maddened seafarer halfway around the world in pursuit of seeking revenge. The tale goes further that seeing the whale's whiteness as something eerie in itself, like the great white shark or the polar bear. "It was the whiteness of the whale that appalled me," the narrator remarks.

Elders had explained that the connection we have to white or albino animals is the feeling inside that all creatures must be respected regardless of their perceived "normality."

Moreover, several critics believe that Melville used the whiteness of the whale in his book to address the widespread abuse of enslaved people in the North American states. The author was aware of the potential violence that the struggle for abolition would bring to his country.

Sperm whales are known to have the largest teeth and biggest brain, with intergenerational culture passed on matrilineally and unique sense of social expression - something "whose fates we hold in our hands."

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