An extremely rare white humpback whale calf has been spotted near Australia’s Great Barrier Reef in an event witnesses described yesterday as a “once in a lifetime experience.”
Believed to be just a few weeks old, the baby humpback was seen at Cid Harbour in the famous reef’s Whitsunday Islands area by local man Wayne Fewings, who was with his family in a boat when he spotted a whale pod.
“We were just drifting when I noticed the smaller whale in the pod was white. I couldn’t believe my eyes and I just grabbed my camera,” Fewings said.
Photo: AFP/ Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority/ Wayne Fewings
“Then the white calf approached my boat, seeming to want to check us out. I was just so amazed at seeing this animal, it made me think how truly astounding the Great Barrier Reef is,” he said of Saturday’s sighting. “I feel very lucky to have witnessed this, it’s a once in a lifetime experience.”
Reef official Mark Read said white whales were highly unusual, with only 10 to 15 believed to exist among the 10,000 to 15,000 humpbacks living along Australia’s east coast, and purely white ones — like the calf spotted on Saturday — rarer still.
Its parents could both have been dark humpbacks carrying the recessive white whale gene, but Read said one or either may also have been white themselves, raising speculation it was the offspring of famous white humpback Migaloo.
Migaloo — the name is an Aboriginal word meaning “white fella” — is the world’s best-known all-white humpback and has built up a loyal following in Australia since first being sighted in 1991.
Read said it was impossible to speculate on the baby humpback’s parentage without genetic tests to compare with samples taken from Migaloo.
“There is another couple of purely white whales and then there’s a very, very low number of animals that are a sort of blotchy color,” Read said. “It is pretty unusual, but we’d be purely speculating in terms of relationships to Migaloo.”
Humpback whales are currently on their southern migration and Read said the baby white would be feeding heavily from its mother as it laid down fat stores for the “cold Antarctic waters.”
Its sex was unknown and Read said there were no plans to bestow the young mammal with a name of its own.
“We’d be pretty comfortable for him or her just to simply remain anonymous and just live out its life in relative peace and harmony,” Read said.
Australia’s east coast humpback population has been brought back from the brink of extinction following the halting of whaling in the early 1960s, he added, describing it as a “conservation success story.”
A humanoid robot that won a half-marathon race for robots in Beijing on Sunday ran faster than the human world record in a show of China’s technological leaps. The winner from Honor, a Chinese smartphone maker, completed the 21km race in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, said a WeChat post by the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, also known as Beijing E-Town, where the race began. That was faster than the human world record holder, Ugandan Jacob Kiplimo, who finished the same distance in about 57 minutes in March at the Lisbon road race. The performance by the robot marked a significant step forward
Four contenders are squaring up to succeed Antonio Guterres as secretary-general of the UN, which faces unprecedented global instability, wars and its own crushing budget crisis. Chile’s Michelle Bachelet, Argentina’s Rafael Grossi, Costa Rica’s Rebeca Grynspan and Senegal’s Macky Sall are each to face grillings by 193 member states and non-governmental organizations for three hours today and tomorrow. It is only the second time the UN has held a public question-and-answer, a format created in 2016 to boost transparency. Ultimately the five permanent members of the UN’s top body, the Security Council, hold the power, wielding vetoes over who leads the
South Korea’s air force yesterday apologized for a 2021 midair collision involving two fighter jets, a day after auditors said the pilots were taking selfies and filming during the flight and held them responsible for the accident. “We sincerely apologize to the public for the concern caused by the accident that occurred in 2021,” an air force spokesman told a news conference, adding that one of the pilots involved had been suspended from flying duties, received severe disciplinary action and has since left the military. The apology followed a report released on Wednesday by the South Korean Board of Audit and Inspection,
An earthquake registering a preliminary magnitude of 7.7 off northern Japan on Monday prompted a short-lived tsunami alert and the advisory of a higher risk of a possible mega-quake for coastal areas there. The Cabinet Office and the Japan Meteorological Agency said there was a 1% chance for a mega-quake, compared to a 0.1% chance during normal times, in the next week or so following the powerful quake near the Chishima and Japan trenches. Officials said the advisory was not a quake prediction but urged residents in 182 towns along the northeastern coasts to raise their preparedness while continuing their daily lives. Prime
RSS