State police and federal drug enforcement authorities made their annual helicopter sweep over the Vineyard early this week looking for marijuana plants under cultivation.

Sgt. Jeffrey Stone who works out of the Massachusetts state police barracks in Oak Bluffs, said yesterday that 62 plants were found and removed at six sites in Oak Bluffs, West Tisbury and Edgartown.

The annual marijuana eradication program is a federal program that involves the Drug Enforcement Agency and National Guard in cooperation with state police. A National Guard helicopter is employed to search for marijuana growing in abandoned fields and other places throughout the commonwealth.

“It’s an annual program; they have been doing it as long as I can remember,” Sergeant Stone said. “They do the whole state in July and August,” he added. He said there were no arrests in connection with the sweep on the Vineyard which took place on Tuesday and Wednesday this week, although it is still possible that summonses may be issued after further investigation.

The marijuana eradication team was doing its work on Nantucket yesterday, Sergeant Stone said.

In the Vineyard operation on Tuesday morning, 11 plants were removed from a patch in the Harthaven section of Oak Bluffs.

The event was witnessed by Gazette photographer and correspondent Sam Low, who lives nearby and took pictures and wrote an account of what he saw for the Harthaven Herald, a newsletter he writes for that community.

“The chopper was olive drab and it dipped and circled over a house [in Harthaven] . . . I found an assortment of cars, a truck and an SUV,” Mr. Low wrote. “Uniformed state and Oak Bluffs police officers mingled with men wearing camouflage pants and yellow DEA shirts. What was transpiring was not clear until I saw the marijuana plants being stuffed into a bag.”

Oak Bluffs police Lieut. Tim Williamson said yesterday that the Harthaven area near Farm Pond has been a popular spot for marijuana growers in recent years, no doubt due to the fact that the area is moist. “Last year they recovered a lot of plants in that area . . . I think it is because there is water nearby,” Lieutenant Williamson said.

Sergeant Stone said all the marijuana confiscated in the statewide sweeps is later destroyed by police and federal drug enforcement authorities.