‘The ghost orca returns.’ Rare white calf named Frosty spotted off California coast

A group of whale watchers trekked 60 miles to get a glimpse of a rare white orca calf off the Southern California coast.

“The ghost orca returns!” Delaney Trowbridge, Newport Coastal Adventure’s captain, said in an April 24 Facebook post.

Frosty, who is estimated to be 3 years old, was spotted swimming with the CA216 pod of orcas, also known as killer whales, on Sunday, April 23, Trowbridge said.

“Twenty awesome people dropped everything and rushed down to our boats just for the chance at seeing these elusive Southern California visitors,” Trowbridge said.

For most on board, it was their first time seeing a white killer whale, “a once in a lifetime sighting,” according to Trowbridge.

“It’s kind of like the holy grail for some people,” Ryan Lawler, the whale watching-company’s owner, told The Orange County Register. “We know our customers are absolutely fanatical about the opportunity to see killer whales and witness such rarities.”

Frosty was first spotted in September 2019 off Dana Point, The Orange County Register reported.

Experts were puzzled by the calf’s light skin, the newspaper reported at the time.

“We don’t know what the cause is. It’s impossible to know unless a genetic sample is taken,” Alisa Schulman-Janiger with the California Killer Whale Project told the newspaper. “It could be a gene, it could be a disease. We don’t know.”

Newport Coastal Adventure noted Frosty’s light skin could be “the result of a rare genetic condition,” in an April 25 Instagram post.

Frosty was also seen in Monterey Bay in May 2020, The Monterey County Herald reported.

“The remarkable thing I noticed is that his behavior is perfectly normal,” Howard Garrett from the Orca Network told the newspaper. “He doesn’t seem to be regarded as unusual by his family.”

Orcas are “actually the world’s largest dolphin,” according to Newport Coastal Adventure.

There are about 50,000 orcas globally, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries said.

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