Sengekontacket Pond has been closed to shellfishing for the second time in two weeks due to heavy rainfall. The Edgartown selectmen learned of the closure at their meeting Monday.

The pond, which spans the towns of Oak Bluffs and Edgartown, will remain closed at least until Sunday. It is safe for swimming and boating.

Oyster season in Chilmark is set to begin on Monday after the board of selectmen approved the opening of the short season.

At the selectmen’s weekly meeting on Tuesday, the board approved a recommendation from the shellfish committee that permits two heaping bushels a day, Monday through Wednesday. The season ends April 30. Shellfish constable Isaiah Scheffer said half a dozen oystermen had expressed interested in permits — “a controlled amount,” Mr. Scheffer added.

On one of the calm, unseasonably warm early December days we had last month, my husband Isaac took our three-year-old son Emmett and me scalloping in Menemsha Pond for the first time. With each dump of the drag on the culling board we were amazed by what we found — tiny sea robins and flounder that Emmett put in a bucket on the deck, jellyfish, eel grass, and an incredible bounty of bay scallops with their beautiful fan-shaped shells.

Oil Spill in Edgartown Harbor Kills Million Baby Oysters and Fouls Waters

By JULIA WELLS
Gazette Senior Writer

An oil spill of unknown origin sullied the pristine water of the outer Edgartown harbor yesterday, ruining an entire crop of juvenile shellfish at a hatchery owned by the Martha's Vineyard Shellfish Group and posing a possible threat to the rich bay scallop beds off the north shore of Chappaquiddick.

The director of the Martha's Vineyard Shellfish Group said yesterday that nearly four million healthy juvenile shellfish under culture at his Lagoon Pond hatchery have died in the last three weeks because of extremely poor water quality in the pond.

The deteriorating water quality has not affected mature shellfish and there is no danger to humans who eat shellfish from the pond.

Vineyard Haven and Oak Bluffs shellfishermen saw a banner start to the bay scalloping season, and they share their reason why: Lagoon Pond.

Derek Cimeno, shellfish constable for Tisbury, is watching shellfishermen surrounded in bay scallops. "Six hundred bushels of bay scallops were taken in the first two days by family shellfishermen," Mr. Cimeno said.

Shellfish Markets Report Slow Sales

By James Kinsella
Gazette Senior Writer

The sale of local shellfish has sometimes slowed but hasn't stopped on Martha's Vineyard, which has become an Island of harvestable shellfish in a sea of toxic red tide.

Louis Larsen, owner of the Net Result in Vineyard Haven, which wholesales much of the Vineyard shellfish to local restaurants, estimates that overall Island demand for shellfish is off 50-60 per cent from normal mid-June levels.

The worst bloom of toxic red tide in the history of New England closed in on the Vineyard yesterday after shellfish beds were shut down from Maine to Nantucket, and anxious Island shellfishermen awaited word about a possible closure in their own waters.

"I am just hoping it doesn't come here," said Rob Garrison, director of the solar hatchery run by the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah).

"It certainly is close," said Rick Karney, director of the Martha's Vineyard Shellfish Group.