At Katama, shooting started yesterday on Jaws. Around the Universal Studios offices the day before, one wouldn’t have believed it was going to happen.

For a nerve-tattering 24 hours this week, Universal Studios’ production on Martha’s Vineyard of the smash-to-be film Jaws was a suspense story that no audience will ever see.

The $3 1/2-million project had run afoul of the law — the production crew had not gotten permission to do a batch of things it was doing.

And permission-getting, which involves formal public notice (see legal advertisements, Page Two), hearings, and mature deliberation, can be agonizingly long. Production costs are budgeted at $30,000 a day.

The firm, flat fields of Katama, the so-called Great Plain - what use could the energetic men of the 1920’s make of the stretching monotony to fully exploit its, well, its...evenness? The twenties were roaring, but on the Great Plains one could barely work up a sigh; the wind from the sea must be bored itself by the time it had blown over the fields and reached Edgartown.

The Steamship Authority has purchased the 157-foot diesel-powered motor vessel Auriga for use as a freight carrier. The price was $435,140, “which will be augmented by the cost of modifications for Island service, as well as outfitting and delivery costs.”

According to a statement released by the boatline this week, Auriga will be employed primarily in transporting trucks and freight from Woods Hole to Nantucket during the summer schedule.”