(CNN) A rare albino green turtle has been spotted -- newly hatched -- on an Australian beach.
Volunteers from Coolum and North Shore Coast Care were "amazed" to see the tiny creature at Castaways Beach, on Queensland's Sunshine Coast.
Little Alby was taking his time: his brothers and sisters had hatched last Friday, but their distinctive sibling was still in the nest on Sunday.
"It was a surprise. We were amazed to see this small white creature with pink flippers," group president Leigh Warneminde told CNN.
Warneminde said the group was surveying a green turtle nest laid in November to gather research data.
Photos: Albinos of the animal kingdom
The albino humpback whale nicknamed Migaloo cruises along the eastern coast of Australia near Coffs Harbour with another whale in 2005. On Thursday, June 19, he was spotted swimming along the coast near Sydney on his annual migration.
A rare 300-pound marlin was caught and released off the coast of Costa Rica during a fishing trip run by
Maverick Yachts and Maverick Sportfishing Tours on March 11. It's being called the first-ever recorded albino blue marlin, according to
the company's Facebook page. It's unclear whether the fish was albino or leucistic, retaining some essence of its normal pigmentation.
An albino killer whale nicknamed Iceberg, the only all-white, adult killer whale ever spotted, travels in a pod of 13 orcas near Bering Island off the coast of Russia.
A rare albino tammar wallaby and its twin at Chris Humfrey's Wild Action Zoon in Macedon, Australia.
Two-week-old Sri Lankan Albino cobras at the National Zoological Gardens in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
An albino baby turtle swims with green sea turtle babies in a pond at Khram island, Thailand.
A wild white donkey on the island of Asinara, Italy. The donkey is an albino variant of the more common Sardinian donkey.
These two white albino alligators live in the Alligator Bay zoological park in Beauvoir, France.
Two albino porcupines compete for a corn cob at the Kamla Nehru Zoological Garden in Ahmedabad, India.
An albino hedgehog in the Zoo of the Botanical Garden in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi.
A rare albino buffalo grazes in Hellsgate National Park in Naivasha, Kenya.
An albino squirrel in Hout Bay, South Africa.
A rare albino southern right whale calf surfaces at West Australia's Flinder's Bay.
A rare baby two-humped camel stands with its mother in a private zoo at the Crimean resort of Yalta.
While counting the empty shells to see how many turtles had made it to the ocean, they found the animal still sitting on the top of the nest.
"It is a very rare find," she said. "It is the first time I've see one."
Australia's ABC quoted an expert at the Queensland's Government's Threatened Species Unit saying that "albino hatchlings are extremely rare; it probably occurs at the rate of one in many hundreds of thousands of eggs that are laid."
The straggler among the nest's 122 hatchlings, Alby faces a tough life.
Warneminde explained that only one in 1,000 green turtles typically survives to maturity -- and Alby's chances are even slimmer.
Albino turtles, she said, are not well suited to the environment; because of their color, they have no camouflage, making them easy prey for larger sea creatures.
But at least Alby got off to a good start: "He was quite vigorous while walking from the nest to the ocean," Warneminde said.