澳大利亚发现仅存的成年座头鲸

XueLu F.H译

在澳大利亚遇见Migaloo，这头仅存的成年白色座头鲸将载入史册！这简直太神奇了。


挪威惊现白色座头鲸

2012-11-15日的报道

这就像现实生活中的moby dick。这是一种在挪威沿海已经消失的，罕见的白色座头鲸。

32岁的英国海上工程师Dan Fisher在去挪威斯瓦尔巴的航行中发现了座头鲸，并从船的桅杆处抓拍到了照片。这张图后来发表在《每日邮报》上。

下面的视频可以看到白鲸与其同色系伙伴在一起。鲸鱼浮出水面，跃出一个缺口，然后又沉入水中。
这头鲸可能有白变症，就是动物缺少所有皮肤色素的一种基因现象。和白化症不同，白化只会影响黑色素的减少。

虽然十分罕见，这也不是目前所知的仅有的白色座头鲸。

Migaloo这个名字在澳洲土著语言里的意思是“白色小伙”，他是沿着澳大利亚东海岸移居于此的全白座头鲸。
在Migaloo于1991年被发现之前，没有见过其他全白座头鲸的报道。但是，此后，其他的很多座头鲸也被发现了。
在2011年，在靠近北昆士兰大堡礁附近发现一头白色座头鲸崽。有些人猜测这头幼崽和Migaloo可能有某些联系，但没有DNA测试证明这种猜测。

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/15/moby-dick-white-humpback-whale-video_n_2138848.html


White Humpback Whale Spotted Near Norway

2012-11-15

AUSTRALIA- Meet Migaloo, the only adult white humpback whale ever registered in history!  Simply Amazing.

It's like "Moby Dick" in real life. A rare white humpback whale has been sighted off the coast of Norway.

British maritime engineer Dan Fisher, 32, spotted the humpback whale while on a boat trip to Svalbard, Norway, and snapped photos from the ship's mast. The pictures were later published in The Daily Mail.

The short video above shows the white whale in the company of its pigmented peers. The whale surfaces, blows a spout and then dives under the water again.

The whale is thought to have leucism, a genetic condition that reduces all skin pigments in animals. This is distinct from albinism, which affects levels of the pigment melanin.

Although sightings are rare, this is not the only white humpback whale known to exist.

Migaloo, whose name is an Aboriginal Australian word meaning "white fella," is an all-white humpback whale that migrates along the eastern coast of Australia.

Before Migaloo was spotted in 1991, no other all-white humpbacks had been reported. However, others have been spotted since.

In 2011, a white humpback whale calf was sighted near the Great Barrier Reef in northern Queensland. Some speculated that Migaloo and the white calf might be related, but this cannot be proven without a DNA test.