After more than a decade of tending oysters, Dan Martino is ready to pass his knowledge on to the next crop of farmers. 

Dark green and gray, slick with algae, pocked with parasitic scars and polychaete worm tunnels, wild oysters are survivors, fighting everything the pond's brackish waters throw at them.

The Tisbury select board unanimously approved changes to the town’s aquaculture regulations that will allow oyster farmers in Lagoon Pond to grow their crops closer to the water’s surface.

Shellfish farmers in Tisbury are lobbying for changes to town aquaculture regulations, hoping to gain more flexibility in permitted growing methods for oyster farms in the Lagoon.

A bay scallop farming study is one of several projects in Dukes County funded by new state grants, aimed at bolstering the local shellfish industry in a time of climate change.

Oyster farmer Greg Martino won the Tisbury select board’s approval for a one-acre shellfish farm in Lagoon Pond this week, bringing to three the number of aquaculture licenses in town.