Nuzzling the shoreline with the curiosity and daring that made its ancestors easy prey for whalers, a young right whale is swimming slowly northward along the East Coast toward Martha’s Vineyard. The 20-ton mammal is keeping odd company with a giant sea turtle, and together the silent mammoths have been snooping lazily around Long Island for about two weeks.

“Cap’n” Seth Wakeman Jr. of Menemsha reports that representatives of the Oceanographic Institution at Woods Hole got “some of the best whale pictures ever taken,” during a recent visit to the Island. In addition to taking still and movie shots, the scientists also had excellent luck in recording the sounds of the whales which have been seen off Menemsha Bight and Gay Head in recent weeks.

A white whale was seen by Capt. Harry L. Peakes last week while running through Woods Hole. The monster, which was of huge size, showed parts of its body several times, exhibiting a skin that was milk white.

White whales have been seen around the Cape Cod shores on many occasions in the past, but it has been many years since one was seen this close to the Vineyard.

Several shoals of fin-back and hump-back whales were seen a day or two since from five to fifteen miles south-east of Noman’s Land, Vineyard Sound. They were in sight nearly all day on Thursday, and were in shoals of about fifteen.

A Black-fish of the whale species, was found run ashore in the Menemsha Creek at Chilmark, on Sunday last, at a depth of about three feet of water. He was nineteen feet long and is expected to yield about three barrels of oil.