Hey Guys, Wow, It's Literally Moby Dick 

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Looks like the early ‘00s really are coming back in style!

Moby Dick, who is actually a still-unidentified white humpback spotted off the Queensland coast on Monday night, is suspected to be an animal named Migaloo (an Aboriginal name that means “white fella”), who was first spotted in 1991. Via Mashable, who posted the footage, there is also some suspicion that Moby Dick is not actually Migaloo, but “Migaloo Junior.”

Who does it look like to you?

Migaloo’s Twitter feed certainly hints that it could be him:

While also paying friendly homage to his seawater friends:

What a tight, friendly whale, and so computer literate, as well as really excellent in that Melville book, in which he appears as Moby Dick. In any case—Migaloo, Migaloo Junior, or the famed Moby Dick herself—these albino humpbacks are extremely rare; the genetic abnormality that blocks melanin production has only been evidenced in a few whales so far. From Mashable:

“We know there were two white whales born the size of Migaloo on the east coast in the last four or five years. We also believe there is one that cruises up the west coast of Australia but we don’t have photographic evidence of it,” Peterson said, adding there is also a white whale in the northern hemisphere near Norway.

Humpback whales are 40-50 feet long and weigh up to 80,000 pounds; their population worldwide fell by 90 percent before the 1966 moratorium on commercial humpback whaling. They were first identified by the Western world in 1756, and male humpbacks sing songs in the ocean that last up to 20 minutes—maybe for mating, maybe just to say hello.

I love this whale. Here’s the whole video.


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