Fresh fish is landed daily at Menemsha and much of it is being shipped to the mainland by Alec Gale. With his operation set up in what was once a lobster shack, the 34-year-old is shipping more this summer than he has shipped before.

A key ingredient to his success is ice. He manufactures and sells ice by the bucket and fish box. Boats are loading up with his ice before they head out of the harbor, and they are coming back with boxes full of iced fish.

“The ice machine was the happening thing in Menemsha,” Mr. Gale said. With that he has made a lot of new friends and colleagues on the waterfront. Mr. Gale provided ice to the local fish markets and to walk-in customers as well as using it for his transport operation.

“I was told that the quality of fish we shipped was two times better than a year ago,” Mr. Gale said.

Mr. Gale ships most of his fish to Red’s Best, a wholesale seafood distributor in Boston, which uses the Internet in a big way to promote and handle fish buying and selling electronically.

To move the fish, the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School alumnus has a forklift and a Bobcat vehicle. He owns an old Poole’s Fish refrigeration truck.

Earlier in the year his biggest shipment was 10,000 pounds of squid that was caught south of the Vineyard by the Mayhew family.

Squid is a bigger deal than it has been on the Menemsha waterfront.

Capt. Stephen F. Norberg, of the 55-foot fishing boat Corrina, used to do most of his squid fishing out of Long Island. He lives on the Vineyard but usually he would have to take his boat offshore and unload his squid in Long Island.

This is the first summer Mr. Norberg is unloading at Menemsha, something he is able to do thanks both to the availability of ice and Mr. Gale’s expanded operation. Mr. Norberg said he did at least 12 trips this summer, catching squid south of the Vineyard.

On Wednesday afternoon, Capt. Tim Broderick of the fishing boat Four Kids arrived dockside with his boat and toted off 300 pounds of freshly caught fluke, also called summer flounder. In some Island fishmarkets and restaurants it is called Vineyard sole, but a lot of it gets shipped to the mainland. He caught the fish in Vineyard Sound.

Quite a number of fishing draggers unloaded fluke at the Menemsha dock this summer. The season began on June 10. Mr. Gale has been trucking the fishermen’s landings three days a week.

Mr. Gale said it has been a good summer overall, despite a seriously disappointing commercial striped bass season.

“It was the worst year for striped bass,” Mr. Gale said. “Just two years ago, I got more striped bass landed in one day than I handled all summer, this year.” The striped bass season was also short. It opened on July 12 and closed August 10.

Although there wasn’t as much striped bass landed at Menemsha as in previous years, landings of other species of fish more than made up for the lack of the highly prized stripers.

“Black sea bass did pretty well,” Mr. Gale said. “There was scup and yellowfin tuna. And I handled squid.”

Mr. Gale said that on this day, he will probably unload five to six fluke boats. “On Monday I unloaded eight boats,” he said. The season will continue for a few more weeks, before the quota is taken.

Once finished with fluke, Mr. Gale said he will shift his attention to blue mussel farming. He has an expanding blue mussel farm in Vineyard Sound north of Chilmark. There will be plenty to do when Menemsha quiets down in the weeks ahead.