Plans are under way to raise 50,000 juvenile winter flounder in Vineyard waters next year. The work on the two-year $308,000 National Sea Grant project has already begun but the biggest hurdle won’t happen for another year.

There is a resurgence of activity in Menemsha this summer, and it is all related to getting seafood from the boats to the consumer. Every morning, visitors to Menemsha find fishing boats going in and out of the harbor. In the late morning they return from the fishing grounds laden with product

If you are looking for a successful measure of the bay scallop season, which ended this week, the results can be found in large piles of shells in three down-Island towns.

There was a huge pile of shells next to a fish shack at the foot of Skiff avenue in Tisbury last week, as well as similar piles at the old Edgartown dump and in Oak Bluffs at Madeiras Cove. It was a good year, though there are many who have memories of better ones.

The good news began in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, when 68 flapping fish were delivered to the Wampanoag Tribe’s hatchery in Aquinnah near the edge of Menemsha Pond. The adult winter flounder had just been caught earlier Tuesday by Greg Mayhew and his son, Todd, in the Menemsha fishing dragger Unicorn. The hatchery hopes to raise over 50,000 juvenile winter flounder this spring. Later in the year they’ll be released into Menemsha and Lagoon Ponds.

John T. Hughes, the former longtime director of the Massachusetts State Lobster Hatchery on the Vineyard, will be honored by the state Division of Marine Fisheries next month, which will present him with the Belding Award.

Created in 1989 to honor individuals who in the opinion of the state Marine Fisheries Advisory Commission have done the most to promote the conservation and sustainable use of the commonwealth’s marine resources, the award is named for Dr. David L. Belding, a distinguished doctor and marine biologist who died in 1972.