The region’s top authority on sharks, Greg Skomal, is leaving the Vineyard. After 23 years of working on the Island as the state regional sport fishing biologist, much of that time spent researching the mysteries of the deep, Mr. Skomal is moving up within the state Division of Marine Fisheries.

During his tenure on the Island, he has trekked as far away as Australia and the Arctic Circle in his work to study sharks. He has written two books. He has been interviewed on national television. His name and face were cast into the public spotlight in the fall of 2004, when a huge great white shark became stranded in a shallow, small saltwater pond on Naushon. In March of this year, Mr. Skomal answered questions before a national audience about great white sharks he and a team tagged off Chatham the year before, and how they were able to monitor the animal’s travels through satellite technology. The sharks had traveled down along the eastern seaboard.

Mr. Skomal’s move from the Vineyard involves both a promotion and a management reorganization within the state Division of Marine Fisheries. He said this week he and his family will miss the Island and their home in Oak Bluffs. “I always said Martha’s Vineyard is a wonderful Island to come home to,” he said.

His new office will be in New Bedford.

Mr. Skomal, who is 48, came to the Island with a master’s degree in zoology and an interest in fisheries biology that included everything from sharks to white perch. His first job was as a state regional recreational fisheries biologist. His office on the Vineyard was in the former state lobster hatchery.

He has worked on the Vineyard for 23 years, collecting data on fish stocks in coastal and inshore waters. When he started, the striped bass were on the road to recovery and fluke stocks were in trouble. And fishermen were suspicious of what fisheries managers and scientists could do to manage the resource.

“We have come a long way in 23 years,” he said, adding: “Now our fishermen are more actively involved, which is the way it should be. Twenty-three years ago the process was relatively new; now they know what to do and they understand.

“This is not to say that fisheries management isn’t still frustrating. We have fisheries in trouble. Still, fishermen have to bite the bullet [about regulations]. I think we’ve come a long way. I don’t think it is attributable to me but it certainly has been helpful having someone representing the division on the Island.”

When he first came to the Island, he was 25 and had just finished working for a National Marine Fisheries Service program that involved tagging sharks. He worked out of Narragansett, R.I. “I worked for the best in the business when it came to sharks. I loved the job and was very hesitant to leave and take on a new job,” he recalled. “Randy Fairbanks, who was my boss at the time, asked me what I would like to do in addition to regional responsibilities. I said: ‘I love to do what I am doing now studying big fish.’”

“He said, ‘We don’t have anyone doing that.’”

So the Vineyard became a perfect place for Mr. Skomal to focus his interests.

“The Vineyard is a wonderful place; I got to work in a tight community in a very sharky place,” he said. “I didn’t know that it would all happen here: the Oak Bluffs Monster Shark Tournament, or a great white shark swimming into a salt pond on Naushon, or hearing from people on the Island who would love to go shark fishing, not only offshore but from our beaches.”

He wrote a paper about brown sharks with help from the Martha’s Vineyard Surfcasters Association.

Further inshore, he became involved in doing fish surveys of the salt ponds, helping conservation commissions and collecting data. His research helped revive hope that white perch still reside in Edgartown Great Pond, and that finfish swim in Farm Pond.

He worked up local data on striped bass, bluefish, false albacore and bonito caught in the annual Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby. “The derby provided a great snapshot of these four species of fish over a month. I loved it,” Mr. Skomal said.

He credits Leslie Smith, 16 years ago, for inviting him to join the derby committee. Last year he became derby chairman.

And along the way he also obtained his PhD in biology and wrote two books: The Shark Handbook: The Essential Guide for Understanding the Sharks of the World, two years ago, and The Everything Tropical Fish Book, in 2000.

He also fielded a lot of phone calls at all hours of the day and night, from anglers about unusual fish that were caught.

“I was in a tackle shop the other day. Someone asked me, so who do I call? I said you still can call me.”

As a program manager, in his new job Mr. Skomal will oversee diadromous fish programs within the state.

He said there is only thing he won’t miss in his new life on the mainland: “I won’t have to check the ferry schedules and add a day of travel at either end when I take a trip.”