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.

As the small island of Amity - er, Martha's Vineyard
- found out this weekend, when it comes to the movie Jaws, there
are fanatics, and then there are fin-atics.

"There is no other movie I would fly hundreds of miles to go
celebrate," a giddy Yvette Pryor of Augusta, Ga., said on Sunday.
"It's the ultimate movie."

Hospital Ends Year in Solid Black Ink

Total Revenues Are Up for Fiscal 2005; Expenses Rise, Including
Fund-Raising as New Building Campaign Begins

By James Kinsella
Gazette Senior Writer

Revenue and net income increased at the Martha's Vineyard
Hospital during its recently completed fiscal year.

The hospital reported total revenue of $37,932,089 for the 12 months
ended March 31, up $3.05 million or 8.7 percent from the prior year. The
bulk of the increase came through charges to patients.

Island Charter School Honors Six Seniors

By COOPER DAVIS

A Chinese proverb, a willow tree and a piece by Handel were all part
of the festivities last Saturday as the Martha's Vineyard Public
Charter School community celebrated the graduation of the Class of 2005.

Commencement Day: Hail to the Class of 2005

Tabernacle Is Stage for 195 Graduates at Regional High

By RACHEL KOVAC

Sunday was an afternoon for storytelling as the Class of 2005 was
graduated from the Martha's Vineyard Regional High School. With
humor and sensitivity, students and school leaders drew on the past and
looked to the future while the 195 graduates sat listening under the
protective covering of the Tabernacle. The warm weather and blazing sun
only added to the excitement.

West Tisbury, Chilmark Divide Deepens Over School District

By IAN FEIN

After a two-hour joint meeting called this week to discuss the
status of the Up-Island Regional School District, the West Tisbury
finance committee and regional school committee did not appear any
closer to resolving their differences about the fate of the district.

The two boards, which have a history of emotional disputes, traded
barbs during the discussion and in the end could not even agree whether
the meeting was worthwhile.

Real estate sales on Martha's Vineyard are falling against a backdrop of increasing inventory and rising transaction prices.

For the first three months of the year, the number of residential, commercial and condominium sales on the Vineyard dropped 28 per cent to 82, while listings in those categories rose 30 per cent to 387, according to LINK, a real estate information business based in Vineyard Haven.

Eric Herman sits down Tuesday at a booth in Linda Jean's
Restaurant in Oak Bluffs for a lunch of chicken fingers and French
fries, and admits a half-hour later that his stomach is still a bit
topsy-turvy.

When Paul Garcia looks back at that hectic summer 31 years ago, he mostly remembers a lot of standing around, talking baseball with the lead actor and waiting to be called to the set. For Lynn Murphy, that summer meant time in the Valerie N. towing boats, barges and shark cages across Island waters. And for Hershel West it was the summer his dog Chipper won him a speaking role in one of the biggest films of all time.

Bakery Lands in Court Feud

Heir of Bartlett Humphreys Sues Claiming Name, Recipe Rights; New
Shops Open Down-Island but North Tisbury Is Dark

By IAN FEIN

Humphreys, the Vineyard bakery that has been a North Tisbury
landmark for more than half a century, is now at the center of a tangled
court dispute over the rights to its name and recipes.