Nantucket Current

20/11/2025

The dead s***m whale at 40th Pole beach will be towed offshore before Thanksgiving, town manager Libby Gibson announced Wednesday night.

“Long story short, plans are underway to remove the whale and tow it offshore, which has to be many, many, many miles away outside of this so called drift zone, so that it doesn't reappear,” Gibson said Wednesday night. “And the team from NOAA is trying to get some samples, and that's going to be a bit messy, but they're trying to work on that by the end of the week, and there's not a specific time or day for the removal, but it is going to hopefully happen soon, before Thanksgiving. It is very likely that the bill for the towing will land with the town, but there may or may not be some cost sharing or reimbursement from other entities that are under evaluation. I did find out that the town of Yarmouth had something similar within the last year and a half or so, a finback whale washed up somewhere in the vicinity of the town of Yarmouth, and that was an even bigger situation, and they had to tow that 65 miles off of Chatham to make sure it didn't return, and it didn't return. But that's the type of effort it's going to take to make sure we don't see it again.“

📸: Peter Sutters

19/11/2025

Update: NOAA's Office of Law Enforcement is on-island Wednesday afternoon to remove the beached s***m whale's jaw. This is being done to prevent any theft of its teeth, which are illegal to take and possess. The Environmental Police will take the jaw off-island.

Photo by Kit Noble Photography

19/11/2025

The former Surfside Lifesaving Station and Star of the Sea Youth Hostel on Western Avenue was sold on Tuesday for $4.5 million, marking a new chapter in what has been a tumultuous half-decade for the historic property.

The buyer, at this point, remains unknown. According to property records, the .69-acre property overlooking Surfside Beach was purchased on Tuesday by ACK Nightingale LLC, a limited liability company represented by attorney Ryan Kelly, a partner at Scafidi Law in Waltham, Mass.

Nantucket Current is the island's leading online news source. We deliver the news, stories, and people of Nantucket, unbiased and unfiltered.

18/11/2025

🛟 When bad weather forces the ferries to cancel trips and rough seas send most mariners back on land, that’s when it’s go time for the men and women of U.S. Coast Guard Station Brant Point.

High winds and big waves mean heavy weather training for the crew aboard the station’s two 47-foot motor lifeboats, which are its primary response vessels.

On Monday, Station Brant Point master chief John Lowell invited the Current aboard one of the lifeboats to see firsthand how his crew prepares for search and rescue missions in the waters around Nantucket.

The conditions had to reach a certain threshold first: sustained winds had to be above 30 knots, or buoys had to show eight-foot seas. Both of those conditions were met on Monday as the island was buffeted by strong winds that cancelled the fast ferries.

And so the Current’s photographer-at-large Kit Noble joined the crew of Station Brant Point on a blustery training mission outside the harbor, where they conducted several practice tows and other drills to hone their skills and record the necessary training hours toward their certifications.

“It’s extremely important for us,” Lowell said of the heavy weather training. “Another great example is when that yacht Wanderlust broke free of its anchor this summer. That was another day where we were out there doing heavy weather training all day, and then we came back, and basically, as we’re securing the boats from the training, we get a call to go tow this giant boat Wanderlust off the pier in heavy weather, with the winds about 30 knots. So that’s just a great example, and kind of a high-profile one, where the training pays off. But certainly in Nantucket, we get winds pretty often. So it’s good for us to have that training and proficiency to go out there and do it when we need to.”

Almost right on cue, Monday’s training turned into a real-world situation.

As the crew was underway, the station received a call about a disabled scallop boat in the harbor. They quickly returned, swapped one of the 47-foot motor lifeboats for a smaller, shallow-water response boat, and located scalloper Frank Dutra to tow his boat safely back to the docks.

17/11/2025

S***m whale update: After the Marine Mammal Alliance met with NOAA, IFAW and Barrett Enterprises this afternoon, it was determined the s***m whale weighs 104,000 pounds (52 tons) and is too big to be moved. "So it will be there until further developments. We'll do as much as we can on site to gather info."

“Marine Mammal Alliance Nantucket has been consulting with numerous experts at NOAA and IFAW to discuss next steps and what is possible. Trevor Barrett of Barrett Enterprises, who skillfully removed the much smaller Minke whale for us last year, was also on the conference call. The conclusion was that this whale was far too big, awkward and heavy to remove from the beach. No amount of equipment could pull it off. We had hoped to be able to perform a full necropsy off site, but that has been determined to be impossible. Given the tides and size, we will do a thorough examination in place to the extent that is safe, taking as many samples as possible. We expect to be joined by experts from off island.”

17/11/2025

Power is out to nearly 2,000 National Grid customers in the mid-island area Monday afternoon. A utility pole on Pleasant Street was struck by a work truck near the intersection with Back Street. National Grid, along with Nantucket Police and Fire personnel, are on the scene.

17/11/2025

Here’s everything we know so far about the s***m whale that washed up along Nantucket’s north shore on Sunday:

Nantucket Current is the island's leading online news source. We deliver the news, stories, and people of Nantucket, unbiased and unfiltered.

16/11/2025

UPDATE: Marine Mammal Alliance Nantucket inspected the carcass and determined it is a 40 to 50 foot male s***m whale.

ORIGINAL POST: Very sad to report a large whale has washed up dead along Nantucket’s north shore.

Hard to tell the species at this point.

Marine officials have been notified. More details as we learn them.

13/11/2025

An island resident who was the target of a federal arrest warrant executed at a Hooper Farm Road residence last November pleaded guilty to two drug distribution charges in federal court last week. He was scheduled for sentencing in early 2026.

Nantucket Current is the island's leading online news source. We deliver the news, stories, and people of Nantucket, unbiased and unfiltered.

13/11/2025

⛴️ Alex Kryska, a maritime and transportation executive from California, was named the new general manager of the Steamship Authority on Thursday following a 4-1 vote by the Steamship’s Board of Governors.

Kryska will replace Bob Davis, who is retiring at the end of 2025 and has led the Steamship Authority for the last seven years.

Kryska is leaving his job as the chief operating officer of PROP in San Francisco, CA, a private maritime transportation company that operates high-speed ferries in the San Francisco Bay area and Puget Sound. He was one of two finalists for the Steamship’s leadership post, along with Mark H. Amundsen, the SSA’s current chief operating officer.
After graduating from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, NY, Kryska started his career as a ship broker in California, and also served as a tanker manager for the U.S. Navy’s Military Sealift Command in San Francisco.

Kryska had stints working for an aviation security company, serving as its director of operations and business services, as well as in consulting, and with a private education company that wrote standardized tests. His maritime career includes roles with the “Ride the Ducks” company that operated amphibious vehicle tours, and for the past eight years with Prop, where he worked his way up to chief of operations.

That background, Kryska told the Steamship Authority governors last week, made him the best candidate for the job.

“I think my varied, eclectic, jack of all trades background really kind of led me to this,” Kryska said. “I’m the right person at the right time. I think I have a unique, very unique set of skills…I’ve been working for quite a number of years, in a lot of different industries. I’ve seen a lot of different things. I think that’s kind of put me in a place now where I have the patience, the confidence, the understanding to take on a new challenge, and this is, yeah, I absolutely think this will be a big challenge, but I don’t see it as one I can’t succeed at.”

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