A white whale once almost thought to be a mythical creature (we'll just call it the Loch Ness monster of the whale world) has been spotted in the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. The mammal was spotted once before in the area, however that was years ago and until last month, it hadn't been seen again.

"I had heard about this whale, but we had never been able to find it," said Holly Fearnbach, a research biologist with the National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle who photographed the rarity. "It was quite neat to find it."

The 10,000 pound male is mostly white in color, but because of yellowish or brownish markings, was not believed to be a true albino. The only other spottings near the area where the most recent sighting occured were in the northern Bering Sea in 1993 and the central Aleutians in 2001.

The whale is currently said to be seeking a restraining order against Japanese whalers and their hunting harpoons.

» National Geographic News