If you're not feeling quite ready for the holidays, if the festive mood hasn't grabbed you, don't worry. You're not alone.

Opening day for the bay scallop season is as much a part of the Vineyard culture as any holiday. On Saturday, dozens of smiling Tisbury residents turned out in Lagoon Pond to harvest bushels of the tasty sweet bivalves, and they had little trouble finding them.

Holders of family recreational permits harvested 528 bushels last weekend. Those bay scallops would be valued between $40,000 and $50,000 if they were sold on the retail market.

The end of the 56th annual Martha's Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby is a day away. Many of the Island's top fishermen will fish right to the end, through tonight and into tomorrow. The derby will end when the headquarters at the foot of Main street in Edgartown close at 10 p.m. tomorrow.

An awards ceremony will take place Sunday at 1 p.m. at the Oak Bluffs nightclub Atlantic Connection.

The Katama Bay oyster is the talk of Island raw bars. Lovers of seafood now have a local oyster available through most of the year. This Island oyster is making its way across the eastern seaboard to Washington, D.C., New York and Boston.

The 56th annual Martha's Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby begins at 12:01 a.m. tomorrow, a minute past midnight. The first groggy fishermen of the month-long contest will line up to weigh in their catch when the derby headquarters opens at 8 a.m. in Edgartown.

"Teenagers," said Dr. Robert Millman, a professor of public health and psychiatry at Cornell University, "have a basic and profound fear of the future. They don't know if they'll make it. The message is you make it if you're tough enough; otherwise, you fail."