Yesterday, we posted about the Moby Dick Marathon NYC, which begins tonight. It is not as one reader suggested a porn event but rather the first-ever marathon-style reading in New York City of Herman Melville’s classic American novel, Moby-Dick. Fittingly enough in the news today there are reports of the sighting of a white whale off the coast of Norway near Spitsbergen. It is not a ship-killing sperm whale like Moby Dick, but a white humpback which has been nicknamed Willow.

Extremely Rare White Whale Spotted Off The Coast Of Spitsbergen

Willow is not the first white humpback to be observed in the wild. From a previous post on October 1 of last year – Of Migaloo and the New White Calf –   About 14,000 humpback whales migrated between Australia and Antarctica each year. Among them is a white humpback, nicknamed Migaloo. Migaloo, or  ”white fella” in an Aboriginal language, was first spotted in 1991 and may be the most popular humpback whale in the world, being the subject of several web sites (see also here and here) and having a Facebook page, (of course) as well as over a dozen Youtube videos.

The last sighting of Migaloo was about a montha nd half ago off the north coast of New South Wales.

Migaloo sighting on the North Coast

Thanks to Irwin Bryan for contributing to this post.