Captain Ahab, Eat Your Heart Out

A few months after I left Vava'u, I learned that a rare white baby humpback had been spotted there, and the mother even had allowed some people to snorkel closely with it. How jealous was I?

The rare ghostly whale calf was seen in November off Vava'u. Experts say the white humpback, now known as Siale, is one of two born last year. After hearing the rumors of a white calf, tourism operators were immediately interested in showing their customers.

"The chance of a white whale being born is exceptionally rare," said Tristin Sheen, from Whale Discoveries, who has been whale watching for 28 years. In fact, only one in 40,000 humpback whales is born albino (albinos have red eyes, but the whale watchers were unable to determine if the baby's eyes were red). Conservation experts and tourism operators are worried about the risk to the calf of too many boats and swimmers trying to see it.

There was also a report of a baby white humpback in Ha'apai, another island group. The other one was named Mahina by locals. White baby whales become vulnerable to predation by orcas during their migration to feeding grounds in the Southern Ocean, and the chances of seeing an adult white humpback are almost negligible.

Herman Melville's classic 1851 novel Moby Dick was the story of Captain Ahab's maniacal quest for a great white whale, and to some extent, today's whale watchers are just as maniacal, though cameras replace harpoons, thankfully.