Maury’s Logbook Data

The data here were extracted from whaling logbooks by Lt. Cdr. Matthew Fontaine Maury in the 19^th century. The data include information on the location of whaling vessels and whales seen or caught from late 18^th to mid-19^th centuries, with almost all of the data occurring in 1820–1855.

The Census of Marine Life project extracted the whale observations from original logbooks and added them to data files of vessel location and weather data prepared by NOAA. These data represent most whaling logbooks used by Maury, but some records could not be associated with specific voyages.

For additional resources related to the Maury Abstract Logbooks, see the About page.

Complete information about the structure of the database is available in the Column Definitions. You are encouraged to submit data additions and corrections through the contact form.

Small subsets of the data may be printed or downloaded directly from the table below. Read The Data Viewer Interface for instructions. For research purposes, the complete database may be downloaded for processing on your local computer.