Sports
For the second week in a row, Chilmark selectmen on Tuesday addressed the continuing struggles of commercial fishermen on the Menemsha harborfront and the state of the town fishing industry.
A number of fishermen, members of the shellfish advisory committee and the town harbor master turned out to discuss rising fuel prices and hear a plan to survey the biology of Menemsha Pond in an effort to enhance fish stock.
Environmental medicine specialist Dr. Lisa Nagy will discuss the causes, symptoms, complications and treatments for chemical sensitivity at the Chilmark Public Library on Wednesday, Oct. 24 at 5:30 p.m. Her talk, Environmental Health: The Controversial Connection between Chronic Lyme, Depresssion, and Alcoholism and living in a moldy home, is free, open to all and sponsored by the Friends of the Chilmark Public Library.
The couldashouldawoulda’s are a week old now but the fact is the Vineyarders are still in the mix for a league title and a trip to their eighth Sup
By MARK ALAN LOVEWELL
THE MOST IMPORTANT FISH IN THE SEA, by H. Bruce Franklin. Island Press / Shearwater Books, Washington, 2007, 266 pages.
Eleven years ago, a group of Island fishermen went to Sandwich to attend a public hearing on the management of striped bass. We all sat in an overcrowded auditorium and listened. One commercial lobsterman stood before the regulators and complained too many striped bass were eating his lobsters and ruining his fishery.
When Martha Smith and her then-boyfriend Charlie began dating 15 years ago, they spent a lot of time at the annual Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby headquarters at the foot of Main street in Edgartown.
She ran the derby headquarters, two hours in the morning and two hours at night, and coordinated the volunteers. He would watch, stepping in occasionally to help. “I hung out at the derby headquarters to be with her,” Mr. Smith said. “I think I was there just about every night.”
The Menemsha harborfront, long defined by a history of providing open dock space for working draggers and lobstermen, must be protected, a vocal gathering of Chilmark fishermen told their selectmen early this week. The fishing industry is ailing and the harborfront endangered, they said.
“In a few years, there will be no fishermen,” warned Louis S. Larsen Sr.