Denys and Marilyn Wortman of Hines Point were honored on Friday as the joint recipients of this year’s Spirit of the Vineyard award, given annually by Hospice of Martha’s Vineyard. The Wortmans’ work and community support was praised, and their sense of humor celebrated, by their friends and associates who made the atmosphere a jovial one at the celebration in the regional high school’s culinary arts room.

Vineyard bay scallops, the Island’s biggest export this time of year, are at a premium.

Even though fishermen are coming ashore on the mainland with product, Roy Scheffer of Edgartown, a longtime commercial fisherman, said: “We have the nicest scallops. It looks like it is going to be a good Christmas.”

The price fell early in November, but it is back up now. At the market, fishermen can expect to get paid as much as $13 a pound for their shucked product. Consumers can expect to pay close to $17 a pound retail.

Four days into the deer shotgun season and already 196 deer have been taken. The two-week hunting season began Monday morning with foul weather. John Scanlon, a state wildlife biologist assigned to the Vineyard this week, said that the hunters didn’t start bringing deer to the check-in station at the state forest until later in the afternoon.

By Wednesday afternoon the number was 79. By yesterday afternoon the number had grown to 95, even though Thursday morning was windy and stormy.

The Island Food Pantry, the organization that provides free food for the needy, had its busiest day ever on Wednesday. Seventy-one visitors came for food at the center, in the basement of the Christ United Methodist Church, the stone church in downtown Vineyard Haven.

Vineyard harbors have emptied. Mooring balls that bobbed up and down through the summer were replaced by floating blue and white stakes. The osprey are gone and herring gulls dominate the shoreline.

Gov. Deval Patrick this week signed into law a saltwater recreational fishing license requirement that is the first of its kind in the commonwealth.

The license law takes effect Jan. 1; its purpose is to improve the way federal and state fisheries managers gather data about fish landings.