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An enormous white whale has been spotted by a group of animal lovers who think they may have seen a real life Moby Dick.

The rare albino was filmed off the coast of Mexico by Manuel Gonzalez who had been out on his boat with friends.

The 35-year-old said: "I’ve seen albino animals only in pictures, documentaries and in science articles, but I always said in my mind ‘I wish I could see that for real some day’.

“When I saw this whale I couldn’t believe that my dream was coming true.

“At first we thought it could be a very white-ish gray whale, but in this case it was a 100 percent albinism.”

The creature resembles the literary monster from the 1851 novel, Moby Dick – a fictional snow-white whale known for its aggression towards the whalers that hunt it.

(Image: Credit: Pen News/Manuel Gonzalez)

But Manuel said that this whale, which was spotted in Magdalena Bay off the Mexican state of Baja California Sur, had nothing to fear from local fisherman.

“Where the whales are, no one can fish during whale season,” said Mr Gonzalez.

“Actually, local fisherman stop commercial fishing because they make good money out of whale watching, so they give the fisheries a rest.

(Image: Credit: Pen News/Manuel Gonzalez)

“That helps the ocean for some months – less fishing means more live fish swimming in the ocean.”

An albino whale sighting has been recorded by Mexican authorities before in 2008, with the creature nicknamed Galón de Leche, meaning gallon of milk.

There was reportedly another sighting in 2017, at which time Galón de Leche was seen with a calf nicknamed Costalito de Sal, meaning little sack of salt.

(Image: Credit: Pen News/Manuel Gonzalez)

(Image: Credit: Pen News/Manuel Gonzalez)

It’s unclear whether the California gray whale seen this time is either of these, but Manuel knows how lucky he’s been regardless.

“I study cetaceans,” he said. “I take tourists there as a business and I also take friends for visits on my days off.

"I really enjoy my job so I look for any excuse to go there.

“The day that we saw the albino whale we were a group of 10 friends – for three of them it was their first time ever seeing whales, and four were marine biologists who love nature.

“Every time I go to see whales is incredible and every day I learn something new about them.

“But there is something about these whales that makes them special.”

In the famed novel Moby Dick the obsessive Captain Ahab tries to catch a white whale which had previously bitten his leg off at the knee.