‘Rare’ white dolphin seen swimming with pod near South Africa. See photos of the baby

A boat captain was out with family and friends off the coast of South Africa when something in the water caught his attention. Scanning the water, he spotted a small, white dolphin, photos show.

The captain, Lloyd Edwards, was celebrating his son’s wedding and took a group out on a boat ride around Algoa Bay, he said in an April 4 news release from his company, Raggy Charters. He piloted the boat to an area where Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins like to gather.

“All of a sudden, I saw a white flash in the water among a pod,” Edwards said. “When I saw it again, there it was.”

A small, white dolphin was swimming with the pod, photos show. The dolphin’s unusual color contrasts with the blue water and gray dolphins nearby.

Edwards estimated the “rare” dolphin was about a month old and about 3 feet long. The baby “was always swimming in the middle,” he said, “and being protected by its mother and the rest of the adults.”

He identified the dolphin as albino, according to the release. McClatchy News has reached out to other marine experts to confirm this description.

Albinism is a genetic condition that occurs when an animal’s cells “can’t produce melanin, the pigment needed to color skin, scales, eyes and hair,” according to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. Albino animals “can appear white or pink.”

Some abnormally pale-colored animals actually have leucism, the department said. Leucism occurs when an animal has “lighter coloration patterns” but lacks the “pink eyes, nails, skin and/or scales” that distinguish albino animals.

According to Edwards, the white dolphin he spotted had pink eyes. In one of his photographs, the skin around the dolphin’s eyes appears pink, but the animal’s eyes look closed.

Albino dolphins are a rare sight. One albino bottlenose dolphin calf, known as “Cherub,” was spotted in Tampa Bay, Florida, in 2021, according to WTSP. An albino Risso’s dolphin was seen in Monterey Bay, California, in 2015 and 2017, according to LiveScience.

Because of their unique coloring, albino dolphins attract attention — from both people and predators, Edwards said in the release. The animals can also suffer from health problems, including skin problems as well as “poor eyesight and hearing,” due to their lack of melanin, experts told LiveScience.

“After 31 years of marine cruises in Algoa Bay (,) I thought I had seen it all,” Edwards said in the release. “What a mistake that turned out to be!”

Algoa Bay is east of Gqeberha, a city previously known as Port Elizabeth and about 465 miles east of Cape Town.

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