Whaling captains might feel at home today if they ventured along North Water street in Edgartown.

The street has a new look that is decidedly old. Utility poles, transformers and overhead wires are gone. And the street is lined with historic reproduction lanterns that glow softly at night.

S. Bailey Norton, a resident of the street and point man in the $3 million public-private project to bury the utilities, said this week he is extremely pleased. The project took six years to complete.

The P.A. Club was packed with old friends and even a few old political foes on Friday night. Tricia Bergeron was there. So was Patricia A. Costa, who was Oak Bluffs town treasurer for 22 years, and Florence Ben David, who worked in the assessors’ office for the same number of years. Town counsel and native son Ron Rappaport showed up too, shaking hands and sharing smiles and never loosening his tie. Alan Schweikert, Priscilla Sylvia, Judy Williamson . . . the list went on.

The waters around the Vineyard are warming and scientists believe this may account for a shift in fish populations here. Scientists with the National Marine Fisheries Service and their science center in Woods Hole recently released the results of an 18-month study that examined 40 years of fisheries data and the movement of more than 30 species.

Jill Robie, the new interim executive director at the YMCA of Martha’s Vineyard, began her first day on the job Tuesday wearing a hard hat and walking through the new $12 million facility in construction off the Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road.

While she was touring the concrete swimming pool with Chuck Hughes, president of the board, and Bill Skinner, board member, there were loud roofers outside overhead hammering in new shingles.

Jason Canha, a 36-year-old special agent with the Air Force, was serving at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan last summer when he received four large boxes from the Vineyard. In that hot and windy place, Mr. Canha said, T-shirts are at a premium, and those boxes were loaded with T-shirts and other items from home. “It was almost like Christmas,” Mr. Canha said this week during a brief visit home with his parents in Oak Bluffs.

Over the years she has sold a lot of eels and given out a lot of advice about how and where to catch fish.

And last month Ruth Meyer, former longtime owner of Larry’s Tackle Shop and a quiet unsung hero in the fishing community, was inducted into the Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby hall of fame.

On a rain-streaked morning last week, Ms. Meyer sat at her home in Edgartown and recounted a few memories. “I didn’t choose to run a fishing tackle shop because sales was my profession. I inherited it,” she said.