Special Town Meeting Set in Chilmark

By BRIEN HEFLER

Harbor repairs, health insurance for firefighters, extending the
town building cap and a plan to lease out town property for a community
swimming pool will all come before Chilmark voters at a special town
meeting Monday night.

Set to begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Chilmark Community Center, the
warrant includes 10 articles. Moderator Everett Poole will preside over
the special session.

If you ask Thomas Ronan, he'll tell you it was a great week of
fishing around the Island during the second week of the Martha's
Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby.

But that is to be expected from someone who lands a 39.48-pound
striped bass that puts him atop the leader board and into the running
for a new truck.

Capt. Gregory Mayhew, a Vineyard native and lifelong resident of Chilmark, runs the 75-foot steel dragger Unicorn out of Menemsha. This summer, for the first time in more than 20 years, he went sea scalloping. The reason, he said, is economics.

Pots and pans rattle. The television slides back and forth. Each time the bow of the Albatross IV slides up over the crest of a wave, something inside the 187-foot vessel bangs or rolls.

Twenty seconds later, when the bow descends into the valley of the next wave, the pots and pans bang back and forth again.

On this day, Sunday, April 3, the ship is on Georges Bank, more than 100 miles east of Cape Cod, so far from land it is not worth seeking shelter. The ship rides the waves at Cultivator Shoal, once a prime fishing area.

Georges Bank is a huge underwater island - 20,000 square miles and as large as the state of Massachusetts - that lies just below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.

The bank is part of the continental shelf. More than 10,000 years ago, geologists believe, the bank was a high and dry island.

As the ocean rose, the island was submerged. Fish love the bank because it is a great source for food. Water depths are not much more than 100 feet and sometimes as shallow as 20 feet. Light from the sun penetrates to the bottom and supports a world of microscopic plankton that fish eat.

On an open sea deck, with the rolling waves of Georges Bank a mere eight feet away, Jon Brodziak cuts, and with tweezers takes a bone from each of the two inner ears of a haddock.

He places them in a small envelope for future study.

Then he does it again with another haddock. And again.

The bone is the otolith, which is used to tell the age of the fish; it is a far better measure than length.

Mr. Brodziak, along with several other scientists, is in the middle of a six-hour shift on the Albatross IV, in the pitch black night on the open ocean.

Linda Despres, the chief scientist aboard the Albatross IV, has a
haunting memory of visiting Georges Bank as a 23-year-old scientist.

"I have this picture in my mind of Georges Bank at night and
seeing the lights of over 50 ships going back and forth across the
horizon," she says.

The old wooden sailboat up on blocks inside the shed at the
Martha's Vineyard Historical Society in Edgartown doesn't
look like much.

The white lapstrake boat, less than 20 feet in length, has not been
in the water since it was brought to the society in December 1936 from
Menemsha Creek. The paint has come off in many places. There is little
chance she will ever float again.

The question of how cod stocks fell so low in the waters off New
England is almost as perplexing as the question of how to bring about
recovery.

The favorite reason - too much fishing pressure - is
followed by other explanations, including changes in ocean temperature
and degradation of the environment. Perhaps it is a combination of these
things.

Pinpointing the cause or causes of plummeting cod stocks is key to
their rejuvenation.

The legend of the codfish is woven with many well-worn tales in New
England, where a century ago schools of cod swam so thickly they could
be scooped up in baskets from thigh-high water near shore. Cod was the
symbol for New England and for the rich fishery that was the backbone of
the regional economy. Vineyard fishermen built wooden boats that they
named after Noman's Land, the island where they salted and dried
their codfish catch on the rocks in the sun before taking it to market.