A pilot flying over Costa Rica snapped a once-in-a-lifetime photo series when he spotted a rare sight from the cockpit, an albino humpback whale calf swimming with its mother.
Felipe Chavez, 29, is a pilot of 11 years, flight instructor, and hobby photographer from Costa Rica. He was flying over the Pacific coastline of his home country on Oct. 2, near Nosara, when a flash of white appeared under the surface of the ocean.
“We were trying to find a whale for a week, flying pretty much all the days, and we didn’t have any luck,” Chavez told The Epoch Times. “When I saw the whale we thought it was in the belly-up position; we thought that probably it was dead at the beginning. I thought it was a piece of debris, or garbage, that sometimes is floating around on the sea.”
However, as soon as Chavez pulled out his camera to snap a picture he noticed that it was a white whale that was swimming beside its mother. He said that usually other calves are playful, but this albino calf was calm, swimming and “just enjoying the ocean.”
While flying, Chavez and his friend didn’t know how rare the white whale was. Upon landing in Masada, Chavez searched online and discovered, to his surprise, that there are only three documented white humpback whales in the world. The most famous, Migaloo, lives along the Australian coast.
“We got pretty excited, but we didn’t know the impact of the pictures,” he said. “As soon as we landed, I got in contact with a biologist here in Costa Rica. He told me that it was pretty rare and that I needed to send him some pictures so they can make some studies. I did. He was pretty excited because it was the first time here in Costa Rica that someone saw this kind of whale.”
Chavez captured his stunning shots of the white whale calf using a Nikon D500 camera with a 28-300mm lens, adding that he might have achieved better shots with a telephoto lens but there wasn’t enough space on his friend’s tiny, two-seater aircraft to carry it. For better all-around photos, he uses Lightroom to augment light and contrast, and saturate colors.
Chavez believes that the whale calf had clearly “decided” to be born in Costa Rica. Biologists, mariners, and tourists attending tours on the coast have since sighted the rare white whale themselves, swimming with its mother.
The pilot said: “We are a nature country, we are a green country. We were very happy because it’s huge for our country to get this kind of whale.”
Snapping the image, he said, was a “once-in-lifetime” opportunity since they didn’t expect they were going to find the whale when they were on the airstrip.
A long-time fan of photography, Chavez got his first camera eight years ago. He decided to make the most of his country’s stunning biodiversity and his unique perspective from the air by taking aerial photos of nature as seen by a rare, lucky few.
However, he shared that Costa Rica’s tropical microclimates pose one of his biggest challenges.
“We have to take a look at the weather, then I have to file a flight plan and we decide where to go,” he said. “Pretty much the whole year we have nice weather, but in the rainy season it’s difficult to get somewhere like the beaches or the mountains.”
Equally difficult is the unpredictability of his subjects.
“When we’re taking pictures of animals you can’t predict their movements, so you have to be quick,” Chavez said. “It’s not like flying a helicopter or taking pictures with a drone. We are constantly moving, so we have to make circles over the subject. Sometimes we have wind, sometimes we have rain or other planes, so it’s difficult.”
From every 100 photos, Chavez may choose one or two he can use. But he is grateful for every magic moment.
He said: “Sometimes you don’t expect things in your life, and this is what happens when you are [not expecting] something ... we were pretty lucky with this picture. I feel like we won the lottery.”
