Rare white whale spotted off West Australia

A rare white whale has been spotted off the coast of Western Australia (WA) for the first time.

Researchers from Perth's Murdoch University said footage of the white southern right whale cub relaxing with its mother off Australia's southwestern tip was "a bit of a bonus" of a project trying to better understand the species.

Unlike Australia's best-known white whale Migaloo, a humpback whale often spotted in the warmer waters of northern Queensland, the right whale was not an albino.

Lars Bejder, leader of the Murdoch University study, said there is a 5 percent chance southern right whales would be born white, but they turn black within a year, making the spotting of a white cub very rare.

Bejder said the footage was captured with a drone which the team is using in conjunction with digital tags to track the species' movement in three dimensions.

"We can look not only at the communication between individuals, but also how they're responding to man-made noises," Bejder told news Limited on Monday.

"The amount of information we're collecting from these tags is incredible."

Unlike the humpback whale, the southern right has struggled to recover since whaling diminished the species with an estimated 3,200 rights around Australia compared to more than 30,000 humpbacks.

"Something strange is going on with the southern right whales," Bejder said.

"Both these species were hunted during the whaling era, but humpback whales have recovered at a much higher rate. Why that is, we don't know."

Chandra Salgado-Kent, a marine biologist from Perth's Curtin University, said it is believed that the white cub phenomenon amongst rights was genetic, but it is not known what evolutionary drivers were responsible. Endit