The Department of Conservation and Recreation has awarded the county a $75,000 grant to help finance a beach rehabilitation project, Dukes County manager Martina Thornton informed the county commissioners last week. The money will be used to move sand from Eastville Beach in Oak Bluffs to Joseph Sylvia State Beach, which lost a considerable amount of sand during Hurricane Sandy.
The grant will not completely cover the sand transport, but would give the county “starting seed money,” Ms. Thornton said.
Just about everything washes up on the beaches of Martha’s Vineyard at some point, from seaglass to messages in bottles. And last December, a few lucky beachcombers up-Island encountered a first: Pieces of a personal weather modification device. That’s the formal name. Informally, it’s simply a cloudmaker, a combination science experiment/art project created by Karolina Sobecka, 35, of New York city. Ms. Sobecka designed the cloudmaker as part of her Amateur Human project, which seeks to personalize human relationships with the environment.
Last Sunday, while chasing waves in the Atlantic Ocean at Philbin Beach with my 11-year old granddaughter, I noticed the surf, which had been crashing in, had suddenly disappeared. The ocean I was standing in up to my waist seemed eerily calm. The sandy shore behind me lay perfectly flat, like a sheet of paper. How peculiar.
It’s a whole new, clean green spin on trashy books: on Saturday, August 30, Island author Mathea Levine will sign copies of her new definitely not trashy book I’m Lucy: A Day in the Life of a Young Bonobo at Riley’s Reads in Vineyard Haven — but kids will receive a 20 per cent discount on copies of the book if they bring three or more pieces of beach trash they’ve collected.
As wind power development looms over the Island, planning agencies and other organizations are beginning to come to terms with what that will mean visually. The Martha’s Vineyard Commission and Vineyard Power have each developed visual simulations to show what Vineyard horizons will look like dotted with wind farms.
And depending on your persuasion, the altered seascapes represent either a pristine panorama blighted by industrial machinery or a stirring reminder of the Island’s potential energy independence.
While tropical storm Irene did little damage inland save a good salt blasting and natural pruning of trees, the storm drastically reshaped parts of the Island’s coastline when it blew through last Sunday. At Wasque Reservation on Chappaquiddick, 22 feet of south-facing beach fell into the ocean in a 24-hour period. And around the Island conservation officials reported significant losses of beachfront and dramatically altered shorelines. Beaches that were wide ribbons of sand just last week are now nothing but rocks and boulders, and vice versa.
A large number of beaches have been closed to swimming in Oak Bluffs and West Tisbury due to high levels of enterococcus bacteria found during routine water testing. Health agents in those two towns have put out notices about the closures.
In West Tisbury the following beaches are closed to swimming: Lambert’s Cove, Seth’s Pond, Salt Works at Seven Gates Farm, Long Cove Pond, Long Point at the ocean and the Tisbury Great Pond at the Trustees of Reservations.
A large number of beaches in West Tisbury and Oak Bluffs were closed to swimming this week due to high levels of enterococcus bacteria found during routine water testing. Health agents in those two towns put out notices about the closures.
Then some, but not all, of the beaches were opened again.
At press time Thursday the following beaches remained closed: Lambert’s Cove and the ocean side of Long Point in West Tisbury; and Inkwell Beach, Pay Beach, Madeiros Cove (near the drawbridge on the Lagoon Pond) and Eastville Beach in Oak Bluffs.
Beachgoers whisking their dogs onto Joseph Sylvia State Beach for a quick spin hoping no one notices may want to think twice this summer — the Dukes County commissioners are calling for a volunteer-based patrol program to help enforce the no-dogs policy.
Three days ago, The Trustees of Reservations staff removed the last of the big old telephone poles delineating the parking lot at Wasque Point on Chappaquiddick, lest they lose them to the sea.
A week or so from now, the remaining half of the parking lot will probably be gone; the shoreline at Wasque has retreated almost 100 feet since early November, and continues to erode at a rate of about one foot per day.
