On September 13, 1992, Wally Franklin was recording humpback whales from the mainmast on a 27-square-meter boat. Between 15:51 and 17:43 he was able to observe Migaloo, the white whale. “Towards sunset she decided to swim towards us,” he recalls. He got under the keel, but I had run out of battery in all my cameras and all I could do was watch him go under.” Wally, who had worked for 23 years as an executive in the transport and tourism sector, co-founded The Oceania Project in 1988 with his partner Trish Franklin, in Hervey Bay, Queensland. Since then he has devoted his time to studying the humpback whale population on the Australian east coast. He saw Migaloo in 1992, met him again in 1993 and in 1998. “We call him the humpback ambassador,” says Wally. It is the only albino humpback whale among the 40,000 specimens estimated to live between Australia, New Zealand and Antarctica. Her uniqueness has made her a star with a Twitter account with 11,272 followers and hundreds of news items in the media.
But he hasn't shown up for three years. Last July the alarms went off when the carcass of a white whale arrived on the Mallacoota beach, in the state of Victoria. The analyzes confirmed that the pigmentation had disappeared due to the effect of the sun and that this specimen was a female. Migaloo is a male. Biologists believe that he was born around 1989 and that when Paul Hodda documented the first sighting of him in Byron Bay on June 28, 1991, he was three or five years old. His name means white friend in the aboriginal language. "There is evidence of whales that have not appeared in 35 years," says Vanesa Pirotta. There is still time to see it again."
In her latest job, Pirotta, a marine scientist and broadcaster, has worked with Wally to compile all of the Migaloo encounters, documented as certain or possible. In total there are 106 sightings ranging from Cairns, 725 kilometers above the Tropic of Capricorn, to Cap Everad, in Victoria or Bondi, Sydney's most popular beach. It is the first time that it has not appeared in three years, only between 2001 and 2002 there is no record. For Pirotta it is not extraordinary, since there is not a single route, "everything is a highway for the whales" in the ocean. But he points out that “his absence is the opportunity to talk about why we haven't seen him for so long: is it because he has become vulnerable to some human activities such as fishing, sound, interaction with boats or changing currents? ”.
Migaloo is an opportunity for scientists. Its albinism makes it easier to observe and allows the species to be studied. They are animals with a complex social structure, which evolved in their current form between 12 and 23 million years ago, with complete physiological control that allows them, for example, to regulate blood flow or the ability of males to communicate with song. Scientists have DNA from the whale thanks to samples of its breath, pieces of skin. Also, in 1998 Wally was able to record the singing of Migaloo, which according to a voice identifier would be a soprano that can reach 33 octaves. His songs change from year to year like chart-toppers: "Scientists say the songs have enough information, but we still don't have the Rosetta Stone to understand them."
Humpback whales have always been in culture: from magical animals, to hunting objects and now tourist attractions and more if it is an albino specimen. In 2014, Pirotta came across it: “I heard it was in the [Sydney] area, so I got in the car and drove to the nearest coastline, I could see it in the distance, it looked like an iceberg! That's how white it was, it lit up the water, it was incredible." The fascination is undeniable, but “if something happened to him we won't know for a few years,” Wally muses from Hervey Bay. Hopefully he's touring." “I think the connection people have with Migaloo is outside my scientific capacity, I think it's something psychological,” he concludes.
Migaloo is a star like Moby Dick, although in Melville's story the protagonist was a sperm whale. “Seeing an animal the size of a bus is special –adds Pirotta–, but at the same time it is an opportunity to remember the importance of whales”.
