Last week, a group of Maine lobstermen worked out a plan for how they would respond to an aggregation of endangered North Atlantic right whales in federal waters. In January 2025, an unusually large number of whales surprised fishermen and scientists when they showed up in a part of the southern Gulf of Maine known as Jeffrey's Ledge. Maine lobstermen who fish in those waters want to be better prepared if it happens again.
About two dozen lobstermen turned up at the American Legion Hall in Kennebunkport on Wednesday night, December 10. Many of them, including Jon Nunan of Cape Porpoise, remember last January clearly.
"It was stressful," Nunan said.
That’s because a lot of his lobster gear was located right where more than 90 right whales happened to be congregating. They hung around for weeks; scientists think they were probably feeding.
Fishermen in Lobster Zone Council G, which stretches from Eliot to Cape Elizabeth, decided their best option was to reduce the number of vertical ropes in the water, by removing one of two endlines attached to their trawl — a move which is usually against regulation. But in this case, enforcement officials made an exception.
"It was our fastest and quickest way for us in our area to do something to help not entangle a whale," Nunan said.
That strategy, plus other risk reduction measures lobstermen are already required to have in place, seemed to have worked. But as one young fisherman put it, the industry’s response felt like an “organized scramble”.
At Wednesday's informal meeting, the fishermen in the room made a proactive “gentleman’s pact" — to take those same precautions, and possibly more, if the whales return.
"We're stewards of the sea. I mean, we're out there. We see what's going on all the time," said Zone G Council Chairman and lobsterman Chris Welch, of Kennebunk, who organized the meeting.
"We don't want to interact with the whales physically. We want to avoid them," Welch said. "We don't want any harm to them or any contact. So what we've done in the past and what we're doing now is the right thing."
At the meeting, staff from Maine's Department of Marine Resources assured lobstermen they're keeping a close eye — and ear — on whale activity this winter, through periodic aerial and boat surveys and a new passive acoustic monitoring tool that glides around listening for whales.
If right whales are detected, especially in double digit numbers, DMR says it will contact fishermen with gear in that area, and get the word out to license-holders.
DMR’s policy coordinator, Erin Wilkinson, says the agency is there to support fishermen, and where appropriate, make recommendations.
"We don't have an authority right now to be able to do a closure or any other action sort of in response to that right now. So anything fishermen do would be voluntary," said Wilkinson. "We will work with them to convene a meeting if needed, connect them with marine patrol. We will do our best to communicate information out as quickly as we can."
So far, officials have linked only one right whale death directly to entanglement in lobster gear from Maine. But the industry is concerned that more incidents could trigger stricter federal regulations.
State regulators say the feds could consider this type of "dynamic management" - where industry and agencies cooperate and respond to real conditions on the ground - when it decides how best to protect the species over the next few years.
Now that there's a general plan in place, lobsterman Jon Nunan said he’s feeling better about the prospect of right whales returning to the southern Gulf of Maine this winter. But that doesn’t mean he’d be happy about it.
"I'm just hoping they don't show up," said Nunan. "I'm hoping they don't come back into Jeffrey's. They stay outside. They go somewhere else."
Typically, North Atlantic right whales spend their winters feeding in Cape Cod Bay, or in their calving grounds in the Southeast. But recently, they've been more unpredictable and only the whales know where they'll show up next.
