Great White

Tom Sterling is on the hunt for albinos

by Rachel Frankford

Pity the poor albino alligator. Cajun lore holds that looking a white gator in the eyes brings good luck, but being white's not so lucky for the animal. Adults are rare in captivity (there are fewer than 100 in the U.S.) and almost nonexistent in the wild. Sunburn kills them—if they don't get nabbed by birds when they're babies. "Kites, eagles, great blue herons—they gobble them right up," says biologist and wildlife photographer Tom Sterling.

If there is a white alligator lurking somewhere in the bayou, though, Sterling's the man to find it. He still remembers his excitement when, in 1991, a friend in Ontario phoned and asked if he'd like to shoot a white moose. "I said, 'I'll be there tomorrow night,'" recalls Sterling. "I'd seen thousands of moose, and I'd never heard of a white one."

He ended up tracking the moose, a female, over five years—a task that in remote northern Ontario required a bush plane. He soon embarked on a nine-year quest to photograph all the albino animals he could train a lens on, a search that took him all over North America, from the Gulf Coast to the northern boreal forests of Canada. Next Wednesday, Sterling will present the film of his findings, In Search of the Albino, for the Geographical Society of Philadelphia.

Working off information from state natural resource departments and reports from fellow naturalists, Sterling photographed more than 30 albino species, including turkey vultures, black bears, catfish, porcupines, salamanders, woodchucks and an entire colony of white prairie dogs. Any species with coloration genes can produce albino specimens, although it's more common in some animals than others. (He's still on the lookout for a white Canada goose.)

Pennsylvania, by the way, didn't distinguish itself as an albino hotbed. Sterling heard about a woodchuck and a red-tailed hawk in the area, but he'd already shot them in other states.

Sterling is frequently asked whether he'd considered filming a human albino. He has, and he's even interviewed several people with albinism who were willing to share their stories. But he prefers the study of animals, he says, because he feared getting people involved "might look like exploitation."

Many albinos have the same problem as the little alligators: They're sun-sensitive, easy targets for predators and, if they have full albinism, they often go blind. If an albino makes it to adulthood, there's the question of mating. Since most mammals are color-blind, they do just fine, which is why Sterling went back to Ontario and saw the daughter, granddaughter and great-granddaughter of that first moose. But birds see color very acutely. Female birds simply know what they want, hence the plight of a white peacock Sterling filmed. "He's been celibate his entire life," he says. "The humans who see him think he's spectacular, but the peahens want nothing to do with him."

Sterling is currently working on a documentary about the tiny mountain nation of Bhutan, but he hasn't given up on albinos. Since the completion of the film (a shortened, moose-focused version of which may be picked up by PBS), he's found a hummingbird, a chipmunk and some snakes. But Sterling holds out hope for something bigger, literally—a personal encounter with an albino sperm whale or killer whale, both of which have been photographed.

The literary antecedents are obvious. "Moby Dick was a white whale," Sterling muses. "He would have a good mother to take care of him, he's underwater so the sun won't burn him, and once he gets to full size, no one's going to mess with him."

Well, almost no one.

In Search of the Albino

Wed., Nov. 15, 2 and 7:30 p.m., $12, Academy of Natural Sciences, 19th St. and the Parkway, 610-649-5220, www.geographicalsociety.org