Mark Alan Lovewell
A dead 40-foot whale washed up at South Beach in Edgartown on Friday. The sei whale may have been killed by a boat propeller.
David Grunden, the Oak Bluffs shellfish constable and member of the Island’s marine mammal stranding network, and his team investigated. Mr. Grunden believes the sei whale probably had been dead for a week or more.
Two well-known Oak Bluffs landmarks are being worked on in anticipation of summer.
The photogenic bandstand in Ocean Park (often erroneously called the gazebo), is undergoing a restoration.
And the Tabernacle in the Camp Ground is being refitted with original stained-glass clerestory windows. The work on the Tabernacle is part of a much larger $3 million restoration project which is taking place in phases over a period of years.
Herring have arrived in Vineyard waters, and this is particularly good news for a fish in trouble. Years ago local fishermen used to count the herring by the barrel; today they are counted only by the handful.
This is the fourth spring Massachusetts anglers have been prohibited from catching these fish. The state moratorium is a hardline effort to protect the fish from further decline. An initial three-year moratorium was renewed; it is to last another two years.
They called themselves the Pink Squid Yacht Club. They were a fun group of hardworking Vineyarders who liked to party and raise money for one worthy cause or another, but the PSYC has disbanded. Call it a sign of hard times. Call it a group of anglers and golf enthusiasts who have shifted their interests. The club is done.
The commodore, Glen Searle, of Edgartown, said: “I got tired. Everybody got tired.” Mr. Searle, 52, is an assistant manager at Your Market.
By MARK ALAN LOVEWELL
The Vineyard’s four popular freshwater ponds were stocked with more than 1,100 trout on Wednesday. Officials from the state Division of Fisheries and Wildlife came over with a special truck filled with bubbling water, loaded with rainbow, brown and tiger trout.
Steven Hurley, fisheries manager for the state, said the fish were delivered to Duarte’s Pond, Old Mill Pond and Uncle Seth’s Pond in West Tisbury, and Upper Lagoon Pond which is shared by the towns of Tisbury and Oak Bluffs.
While his youthful memories consist of August summers spent sailing the Vineyard Haven harbor, 27-year-old Lieutenant Mason W. Berry collected a different memory late one afternoon last August.
He was flying from Kuwait to Iraq in a sandstorm. The storm winds were clocking over 60 miles per hour. He was piloting a Navy MH-60 Sierra helicopter, and the intent of his mission was to pick up an injured soldier at a base in Iraq and get him to Kuwait and on to a German hospital for much needed care as soon as possible.