Big crowd turns out for Living legacy of a Harlem Jewish Culture Festival A2 Renaissance artist B1
Thursday, July 30, 2026
THE MARTHA’S VINEYARD TIMES
Volume 43, Issue No. 30
2 Sections
Tisbury sued for workplace retaliation allegations
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Amy Upton, former planning board administrator, alleges the problems stemmed from issues reported against town officials in 2024. BY EUNKI SEONWOO
Gimme that old-time baseball The 19th century traditions of baseball were celebrated at Waban Park this Saturday. Two baseball teams in heavy wool uniforms with knee-high knicker pants, using handmade wooden bats and vintage baseballs, brought the 1800s back to life in a doubleheader that included an underhand game played by 1864 Civil War–era rules, and an overhand game played by 1886 rules. SEE A16 FOR FULL STORY.
NICHOLAS VUKOTA
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former Tisbury employee is suing the town over allegations of workforce retaliation with a complaint that is resurfacing conflict-of-interest questions over properties connected to an offshore wind developer. The complaint, filed in Dukes County Superior Court on Friday, seeks compensation for Amy Upton, former administrator of Tisbury planning board, over alleged retaliation, wrongful termination, and disability discrimination by Tisbury officials. A demand for a jury trial was also filed the same day. The four Tisbury officials named as defendants are Town Administrator Joseph LaCivita, Building Inspector Greg Monka, and select board members Roy Cutrer and John Cahill. “The town has no comment on pending litigation,” LaCivita said in a Tuesday email. Cutrer and Cahill also declined to comment on the suit. Monka was not immediately available to comment. The complaint lists a series of alleged issues in the town that date back to 2024, many of which stem from a property with ties to offshore wind developer Vineyard Wind, which recently finished construction on a 62-turbine wind farm 15 miles south of the Island. Development of workforce housing planned to house Vineyard Wind workers previously brought up concerns over whether an unfair Continued on A9
Chasing shadows offshore Biologist Greg Skomal on his four-decade odyssey to understand the white shark. BY HAYLEY DUFFY
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HATHAM — The water looked like glass as the center-console fishing boat left Ryder’s Cove at 9 am. It motored past Chatham Bar through a natural inlet that moves with the shifting tides, and entered what those on board call “shark country.” Greg Skomal made his way out to the pulpit, carefully and quietly walking to the end of the narrow plank that hung out in front of the boat, and peered through polarized sunglasses at a large, lurking shadow below the surface of the water. Fondly referred to as the modern-day Matt Hooper, who was the iconic marine biologist in “Jaws” played by Richard Dreyfuss, Skomal, who is a Ph.D.-level senior biologist at the Division of Marine Fisheries, raised his arm like he was wielding a harpoon, but he was, in fact, lifting a GoPro attached to essentially a very, very long “selfie stick.” He was not hunting sharks, but he is part of a team trying to tag them for research. At the helm of the boat was Capt. Josh Higgins, who works in tandem with Skomal and a pilot, who spots dark shadows from
the sky to help guide the team. It only took about 15 minutes from the dock to enter the open ocean on Monday, July 20. And only another minute or two went by before Wayne Davis, hundreds of feet above the ground in his two-seat, high-wing propeller plane, suddenly appeared and radioed to the boat that he thought he spotted a shark off the beaches of Chatham on Cape Cod. Davis, a Vietnam War veteran and a former fish spotter, said he saw a dark shadow against the whitewashed sand, near the south end of North Beach Island. Davis’ plane holds a belly tank, Higgins said, and he could spend up to 12 hours in the sky, eyes always peeled for sharks. Monday was the fourth tagging excursion for the nonprofit Atlantic White Shark Conservancy (AWSC) team this summer, and as Higgins navigated toward the shadow, the boat passed several receivers that run parallel to the coast to pick up on tagged sharks. The receivers are placed out in the open ocean by the conservancy, and sense tags placed on the animals by the team. The goal Continued on A8
Greg Skomal on the pulpit. HAYLEY DUFFY © 2026
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