Media accounts of the sighting of a rare, white killer whale off Alaska’s Aleutian Islands is causing waves of excitement among researchers and whale enthusiasts.

The whale, photographed by scientists on a U.S. scientific vessel, is a large, healthy male, said John Durban, research biologist with the Fisheries Science Center in Seattle.

There have been two recent sightings of white whales and scientists are scrambling to figure out if this is the same orca.