The mature female humpback whale that washed ashore dead on Long Beach Island last week was well known to scientists, who have tracked her for thirty seven years. Kimberly Durham, rescue program director of the Riverhead Foundation, described her as a “celebrity in the whale world.” The humpback was nicknamed Istar, after the Babylonian goddess of fertility. Istar was one of the most productive female humpback whales in the Gulf of Maine population, giving birth to at least eleven known calves. Istar was reported to be at least 41 years old, 48 feet long and was estimated to weigh 30 to 35 tons. The investigation into the whale’s death is underway but the damage to her skull suggests that she was run down by a ship. Ship strikes are one of the greatest threats to endangered species of whales.
Humpback found dead on East Quogue beach was a celebrity whale
Our hearty congratulations to 
The roller coasters on the 
A few months ago, the Mississippi River was showing the effects of a near record drought. There was talk in December of 
Last week, 
A 23 year old Croatian kite surfer, Matea Medak Rezic, 
You can’t make this stuff up. Only a week after the last wreckage of the minesweeper USS Guardian was removed from the reef in the Philippines’ Tubbataha National Marine Park, a UNESCO-designated World Heritage Site, where it 
Update: Carnival Corp has has agreed to reimburse the U.S. government for costs related to the high-profile fires aboard the Carnival Triumph in February and Carnival Splendor in 2010. 
We recently posted an embedded video of Tom Paxton’s song, “The Thresher Disaster” sung my threelegsofman. about the loss of the nuclear submarine USS Thresher in 1963. Brian Frizell pointed out that Paxton’s song was not the only ballad about the Thresher. The Kingston Trio also sang a “
Exactly what happened to the ill-fated 
I would like to thank all those who came out last night to the Working Harbor Committee’s presentation of “