On Thursday morning all was right with the Lagoon Pond. The water was clear, blue-green crystal, by all appearances the very picture of estuarine health. Just a day before, the water was clouded by an unsightly yellowish-brown fog from the head to the mouth of the Lagoon. It was an explosion of prorocentrum, an algae, and the largest one that Martha’s Vineyard Shellfish Group director Rick Karney has ever seen.

Last month documentary filmmaker Len Morris of Vineyard Haven accepted the 2012 Iqbal Masih Award for the Elimination of Child Labor from the U.S. Department of Labor at a ceremony in Washington D.C. But Mr. Morris does not have the luxury of basking in the afterglow of the award ceremony. His Kenyan Schoolhouse program, now in its tenth year, is currently putting 34 former child laborers and street children through secondary school.

Concerned down-Island homeowners and some experts are reporting an unusual and troubling abundance of the ravenous creatures. If confirmed the Island’s trees face a cruel spring, but it appears that the damage, though severe, may be localized.