Rare albino sea turtle is hatched in Australia

What are the odds of the average newborn sea turtle surviving the treacherous trip from the beach where its egg hatches to deep water where it grows? Tiny. Even rarer is what volunteers in Australia witnessed recently — an albino green turtle, a genetic rarity with the frequency of 1-in-100,000 births, according to ABC News Australia.

"It looked like a normal turtle hatchling, except that it had a white shell and it had little white flippers, and you could see a little bit of pink under its flippers," Coolum and North Shore Coast Care President Leigh Warneminde told ABC News. "None of us had ever experienced or seen anything like that before, so we were all a little bit taken aback."

Named Alby by the volunteers, according to a CNN story, the turtle was one of 122 hatchlings, but its genetic uniqueness will make it tough to survive, since the young turtles have no defense against larger predators — their shells don't toughen until they are older and the white color offers no camouflage.

For those turtles that do survive, their life expectancy is more than 80 years — longer than the average human life, according to National Geographic. They can also reach 700 pounds and a length of 5 feet.

Watch the little survivor make it out to sea in the video below.