Researchers say Migaloo is alive and well – and looking for love

HE’S the womanising white whale searching the seas for love.

Reports of a white whale washed ashore on the Victorian coast last week left nature lovers fearing the famous Migaloo had met an untimely end before it was confirmed the unfortunate creature was a young female whose body had been bleached by the sun.

There has not been a confirmed sighting of Migaloo, a celebrity of the seas with his own website, Twitter page and CD collection, since mid-2020 when he was spotted on his annual northern migration off the coast of Port Macquarie, but whale researchers are confident he is still out there and could be cruising for encounters with females.

Wally Franklin from Southern Cross University’s marine ecology research centre first came across Migaloo in the early 1990s and said there was no evidence to suggest the rare albino humpback was not still roaming the oceans as a mature breeding male now aged in his early 30s.

“He could be wandering the Pacific looking for love,” Dr Franklin said. “He’s very popular and whenever we see him he is usually in the company of other whales.”

Vanessa Pirotta, a wildlife scientist with Macquarie University’s marine predator research group, agreed that Migaloo could be looking for another mate.

“When you’re a whale the ocean is your oyster,” she said. “There have been periods where we haven’t seen Migaloo for several years and others where he might be seen regularly.

“There are so many variables to migration patterns.”

From critically endangered numbers when whaling was banned in the 1960s, an estimated 40,000 humpbacks will make the migration along Australia’s east coast this winter.

Humpbacks live up to 80 years in the wild, meaning Migaloo is still in his prime.