Louis Samuel Larsen of Chilmark died Tuesday, March 11, surrounded by family at the West Palm Beach Hospital in West Palm Beach, Fla. He was 88.

Mr. Larsen was the patriarch of both a Vineyard fishing family and the wider fishing community.  Born in Menemsha, he began fishing at an early age, and continued to captain the Mary Elizabeth, fishing waters as far north as Newfoundland and as far south as the Yucatan, until 1994.

His son Louis Stanley Larsen, owner of the Net Result, spoke of his father's fishing prowess in a 2007 article in the Gazette. "For a long time I couldn't understand why he worked so hard, but when you started putting the numbers together I realized we usually caught more fish than anyone else. We fished early in the day or late in day — when everyone else wasn't up yet, or had already quit for the day."

A full obituary will appear in the Gazette at a later date.