Fishermen, sightseers and friends filled the Menemsha docks on Wednesday when the fishing boat Quitsa Strider II came in. The word was out. They had hit the jackpot.
Capt. Jonathan Mayhew, 50, of Chilmark and his crew had 31 harpooned swordfish on ice aboard. It has been years since a local fishing boat did so well. Hours later, his brother Gregory Mayhew and his crew on the fishing boat Unicorn landed 16 of the same.
These were big fish: Their average dressed weight was around 200 pounds. The largest weighed 306 pounds.
For Robert C. Cleasby, program director at the Martha's Vineyard Camp Meeting Association, there's no better time for singing and celebrating than tomorrow evening, minutes before the start of Illumination Night.
Illumination Night coincides with the culmination of many wonderful aspects of summer on the Vineyard. "This is the major Camp Ground festival as far as summer goes," Mr. Cleasby said. "It's the really fun one."
Construction crews are almost done erecting a large research tower
nearly two miles south of the Vineyard.
For weeks, a well-lighted barge and tugboat have been involved in a
large-scale project due south of Edgartown Great Pond. They've
been assembling what will be an all-season steel tower loaded with
instruments that will collect weather and ocean data. The tower will
rise 68 feet above sea level when it is finished at the end of this
week.
Understanding the relationships between the ocean and air is essential if weather forecasting in the future is to be more precise. Most living on Martha's Vineyard know the ocean keeps the Island cooler when the mainland is suffering in the dog days of July, and warmer in the winter when the temperature inland is bitter cold. But scientists can't be precise about why.
The bottom has fallen out of the wholesale lobster market, which is bad news for the lobstermen and good news for consumers.
The price being paid to lobstermen at the dock is at a 20-year low, according to Bill Adler, the executive director of the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association. He said the problem is tied to the economy and an oversupply of lobsters.
A badly decomposed 37-foot young humpback whale washed up on South Beach on Friday night.
Sgt. Matthew Bass of the state environmental police said the whale was first spotted in the wash Friday afternoon, in an out of reach on a private beach near Job’s Neck Pond.
High winds, raging seas and strong currents have been hard on Chappaquiddick this winter. Large areas of beach down at Wasque have been moved and removed, lately at the rate of a foot a day. But the latest changes are at the other end of Chappy, where the post-Christmas northeaster cut a new opening on a barrier beach at Cape Pogue Pond.
A $3, 380 bank robbery in Edgartown Tuesday morning led to a high-speed chase and a bizarre showdown in the woods near county airport runways between police with guns drawn and a man firing arrows from a high-powered bow.
The man, later identified as 35-year-old William E. Sweeney of Tisbury, was quickly arrested after tense moments during which police say they almost opened fire.
