Extremely rare white whale filmed off Thailand coast

An extremely rare white whale swam metres away from tourists off the coast of Thailand on New Year's Day.

Footage filmed from a boat shows the pale marine mammal coming to the surface near Phuket.

The white pigment of the Omura's whale's skin was revealed in still images.

Omura's whales are small tropical baleen whales that were first seen in the wild off the coast of Madagascar, according to research published in 2015 in the Royal Society Open Science journal.

The tour company that shared footage of the encounter said they had named the whale "Thalang".