Martha’s Vineyard was declared the winner of the first annual Inter-Island BioBlitz competition this week, narrowly beating out Nantucket in a friendly competition to identify different species on the two Islands.

For two weeks, the rivals raced out into nature to document flora and fauna. It was a close fight all the way to the finish, but the Vineyard eked out the win right at the end. 

For almost the entire length of the competition, put on by Vineyard-based nonprofit BiodiversityWorks and Nantucket’s Linda Loring Nature Foundation, Nantucket held a thin margin. But when the competition wrapped up, Martha’s Vineyard nature enthusiasts had found 1,701 different species – 23 more than Nantucket had registered. 

All in all, the event was a resounding success, according to the organizers. Between Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, participants registered over 16,500 observations, almost double the number of registered observations in years past.

“We added 16,592 observations to iNaturalist while documenting 2,835 species,” said Matt Pelikan, a community naturalist at BiodiversityWorks, in a statement given to the Gazette after the final results were tallied. “A total of 268 observers helped provide this powerful boost to the study of regional biodiversity. In this important sense, both Islands won.”

Events like the bioblitz breathe new life into data gathering and, in doing so, encourage public interest and participation, said Sarah Bois, the director of research and conservation at the Linda Loring Nature Foundation.

“The fun thing for us, quite honestly, being the first year of doing the inter-Island BioBlitz, is that we’ve been neck and neck for the whole two weeks,” said Ms. Bois. “There’s been a lot of documentation of very rare plants in those areas, so it’s exciting that this coincided with the BioBlitz.”

There were several species that were documented for the first time on the Vineyard and Nantucket, including the copestylum bromeliad fly, the eastern ant cricket and the pugnacious leafcutter bee. All three of these species were observed by participants on Martha’s Vineyard.

“This is an example of the power of having all of those people in the field at once,” said Mr. Pelikan. “It’s just a great way to turn up really rare stuff.”

Despite the two Island’s proximity, there are unique features to each ecosystem. What is documented during an event like the bioblitz often helps researchers better understand those differences.

“We have good checklists and it’s really infrequent that additional species get added to those checklists for those groups,” said Mr. Pelikan. 

Mr. Pelikan is grateful to the team at the Linda Loring Nature Foundation, but said that he is looking forward to defending the bioblitz title next year.

“While it was certainly competitive, it was a very good natured and very collaborative kind of competition,” he said.

To see all the data gathered during the blitz please visit: www.inaturalist.org/projects/ack-vs-mvy-inter-island-bioblitz-2026